Decades of nice, kind, and sympathetic government has turned Kensington into what it is today

It was just Monday that we noted that Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right: “Nice guy” policies have led to disaster in Philly. And on the same day, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to a homosexual and HIV activist who uses “they/them” pronouns to decry one of Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ policies:

Mayor Cherelle Parker is losing progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS

If the mayor and the Kensington Caucus make it harder or impossible for people in Kensington to access clean syringes, they will have thousands of new HIV infections on their consciences.

by Jose DeMarco | Monday, March 25, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT Continue reading

Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right. "Nice guy" policies have led to disaster in Philly.

Philadelphia Inquirer website main page, March 25, 2024.

This site has previously noted the open-air drug market in the Kensington section of Philadelphia; with published photos of junkies shooting up right on the street in front of SEPTA’s Allegheny Avenue train station, it’s pretty difficult not to notice. The government of Mexico has actually used photos of Kensington in ads to discourage drug use in Mexico! And Philly’s George Soros-sponsored, police-hating, and softer-than-Charmin-on-crime District Attorney Larry Krasner has actually filed suit to stop efforts to fight crime in Kensington and on SEPTA.

But, rather than far-left Helen Gym Flaherty, whom hard-leftists Will Bunch, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, The American Prospect, have supported, and only slightly-less-leftist Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, whom The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed, the actual voters in the City of Brotherly Love voted for the tougher-on-crime Cherelle Parker Mullins[1]None of the female candidates for Mayor in Philadelphia had shown enough respect to their husbands to have taken their husbands’ names, though they certainly appreciated their husbands’ … Continue reading. And thus the Inky is having to take note of Mrs Mullins efforts to do one of the promises on which she campaigned: clean up Kensington! Continue reading

References

References
1 None of the female candidates for Mayor in Philadelphia had shown enough respect to their husbands to have taken their husbands’ names, though they certainly appreciated their husbands’ money, and most of the articles cited do the same thing; The First Street Journal does not show their husbands the same disrespect, though we do not change the direct quotes of others.

You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Once again, The Philadelphia Inquirer censors part of the story.

Can someone tell me why I am paying $285.48 per year for a newspaper which censors the news?

When I first saw this photo in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Thursday, I immediately asked myself, “Self, is that really a girl?” So, I read a story I might normally have skipped.

Bensalem teen faces 15 to 40 years in prison for killing a 12-year-old girl and showing her corpse on Instagram

Ash Cooper admitted her guilt Thursday and was sentenced to prison.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 3:41 PM EDT | Updated: 6:02 PM EDT

A Bensalem teen who shot and killed a 12-year-old girl, then displayed her corpse in an Instagram video call as she sought help in hiding her crime will spend 15 to 40 years in prison after admitting her guilt Thursday.

Ash Cooper, 18, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and related crimes in the shooting death of Morgan Connors in the trailer Cooper shared with her father in the Top of the Ridge Trailer Park in November 2022.

In accepting the guilty plea, Bucks County Court Judge Jeffrey L. Finley decried Cooper’s actions and lamented Morgan’s death.

“It’s a horrible tragedy,” he said. “A tragedy no family should ever have to undergo.”

It turns out that “Ash” Cooper is actually Joshua Cooper, as reported by London’s Daily Mail. The Inquirer did leave a clue, in that the hyperlinks in the newspaper’s story took us to stories noting that the killer was named Joshua Cooper at the time those stories were published, but if you read reporter Rodrigo Torrejón’s story, there isn’t the first indication that the murderer is actually a male.

The Daily Mail also told us things that the Inky decided to omit:

Cooper, who was 16 at the time of the murder, also allegedly told police she and Connors were in a sexual relationship. . . .

During the investigation, officials discovered Cooper was accused of sexual assault in a previous unrelated case. She was found guilty in juvenile court.

The victim was in court on Thursday as Cooper received his sentence.

So, not only was young Mr Cooper, 16 at the time, having sex with a 12-year-old, but he was previously convicted of a sexual assault on a different person. How is it that the Daily Mail, from 3,500 miles away had this, but the Inquirer couldn’t get that information from a bordering county?

Well, of course the reporters at the Inky knew. The first story on the murder appeared on November 26, 2022, and the second on March 6, 2023, at which point he was still identified as Joshua Cooper. Now, after that time, we find out that young Mr Cooper is ‘transitioning’, trying to become a girl, and no one asks, “Is he really transgendered and ‘transitioning,’ or is he just doing this to stay out of adult men’s prison?” As you can see from the Daily Mail’s photo, Mr Cooper is not exactly a big guy, and perhaps he had watched NCIS, and saw the scene in which Leroy Jethro Gibbs tells a couple of young college kids, “Believe me, son, you will not do well in prison.”

Were I to ask the editors of the newspaper why they concealed the fact that young Mr Cooper is ‘transgender,’ and referred to him in exclusively feminine terms, they might tell me that hey, that has nothing to do with the murder. I would reject that argument, since it’s obvious that the previously convicted sex criminal was also f(ornicating) young Miss Connors — the London newspaper noted that court records stated that the victim’s body “was found laying facedown with her pants around her ankles” — and that the victim’s state of undress indicated that something sexual had occurred. More, the fact that Mr Cooper is claiming to be a girl will have a huge impact on to which prison he will be sent for hopefully the full forty years. One of us wonders on how the newspaper will cover that story.

Ok, OK, this was bad, but really, I’m sure that were about to turn their lives around, any day now!

We have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to child activists Donna Cooper and Anton Moore, to tell us that people’s brains are not fully mature until their mid-20s, and how, rather than incarceration, we should provide those juveniles accused of non-violent offenses with more opportunities for reform. But, rather than being all sympathetic, I instead noted retired Sgt Marc Fusetti’s tweet, which pointed out that two of the three initially arrested for the Burholme shooting had been treated leniently, for non-violent offenses as juveniles, and then went out and, allegedly, of course, shot eight people at the SEPTA bus stop in a targeted hit. I also noted that the Philadelphia Police Department already had a mugshot of the fourth suspect, 17-year-old Asir Boone, which meant that he, too, had a previous ‘encounter’ with law enforcement.

Well, the Burholme shooting net gets wider and wider!

Police arrest 15-year-old they say staked out Northeast shooting victims, texting gunmen ‘go’ as targets walked by

Jeremiah Jefferson is the fifth person to be arrested and charged in a shooting that left eight teens injured in the Northeast.

by Ellie Rushing | Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 5:08 PM EDT | Updated: 7:14 PM EDT

Jeremiah Jefferson, mugshot via Philly Crime Update.

A 15-year-old who police say acted as a lookout for the gunmen in the Burholme shooting, standing inside a nearby Dunkin’ and texting “go” to the shooters as their targets walked by has been arrested, police said Thursday.

Jeremiah Jefferson is expected to be charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and related crimes for his alleged role in the shooting at a bus stop in Northeast Philadelphia earlier this month that left eight students injured. He is the fifth person to be charged in connection with the March 6 shooting.

Jefferson was inside the Dunkin’ next to the gas station, while his friends with guns were seated in a blue Hyundai parked outside, said Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore.

Young Mr Jefferson was allegedly on the lookout for the intended victim in the shooting, described his own clothes so the shooters wouldn’t aim at him, sent photos of the two intended targets, and then, in a final text, simply said, “Go”.

If young Mr Jefferson has a juvenile record, that information has not yet been released, or, more probably, leaked. About the only good thing about this is that, at 15-years-old, there’s at least a reasonable hope that he hasn’t knocked up some girl and further polluted the gene pool, because this fine young gentlemen, if he did that of which he is accused, is dumb as a box of rocks. The last thing Philly needs is more stupid babies born.

Police on Thursday also announced that they intended to charge (Anhile) Buggs, (18), with a separate homicide that occurred in mid-February on the 5800 block of Rising Sun Avenue. In that shooting, 20-year-old Kristopher Dowling was killed just before 9 p.m. while he was walking with a friend to get pizza.

Dowling’s mother, Ivory, said police told her Buggs, who is from Olney, had been driving around the Lawncrest area with others, searching for someone to shoot as part of a back-and-forth feud between groups from Lawncrest and Olney.

The retaliation had been ongoing for years, she said — it was one of the reasons why she moved her family from Lawncrest, their home of 19 years, to Abington two years ago.

That’s two planned and premeditated shootings for Mr Buggs. Let me be clear about this: there’s no reforming this gentleman, and he needs to never see another sunrise outside of prison. His accomplices in the Burholme shootings? They, too, are waste cases, completely lost souls who might, if they’re lucky, find the Lord while they’re in prison, but they, too, should never get out. They are too evil, and too stupid, to ever walk among free society again.

When a reporter has more of an agenda than an understanding of economics and business.

We have twice reported on the decisions of Wawa to close down some stores in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. The late Josh Kruger complained bitterly about such.

This crime is not new, and The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Headhouse Square Wawa “will become the sixth Center City Wawa to shutter since 2020.”

So, you would think that an article in the newspaper on food ‘deserts’ in some Philly neighborhoods would at least mention crime. But, if you did think that, you would be wrong.

About 40 million people in the United States don’t have access to a full-service grocery store

The 2023 update of the Limited Supermarket Access Study examines the lack convenient access to health food options across the nation — and in Philadelphia.

by Lynette Hazleton | Thursday, March 21, 2024 | 5:00 AM EST

What food is available has everything to do with the food stores that are available.

When the food store is a full-service supermarket, like the ShopRite in Parkside, it usually means you will have the access to a wider variety, higher-quality and lower-cost food, explained Michelle Schmitt, a senior policy analyst at The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) as she walked around the bustling 15-year-old supermarket.

As you can see, the article wasn’t produced by the regular Inquirer staff, but the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the non-profit which owns the newspaper. I have previously noted that, as a subscriber, I sometimes receive begging for donations letters from the Leftist Lenfest Institute.

When you don’t have the same access to high quality food as you do to chips, fast food and soda, it can contribute to an unhealthy eating pattern that can ultimately lead to chronic disease.

How is it that Lynette Hazelton, the Philly native who reported this story, couldn’t bring herself to note that the densely-populated rowhouse neighborhoods which make up a significant part of the city’s neighborhoods don’t really have room for a huge Giant Food Mart? Yes, there are corner bodegas in most of the neighborhoods, where you can get those chips, fast foods, soda, beer, lottery tickets, and the occasional bullet in your chest. But the kinds of supermarkets that Miss Hazelton envisions take up around ten acres when parking lots are included.

Schmitt is the main author of the 2023 update to the Limited Supermarket Access (LSA) study which determines who is and is not well served by their grocery store. The official definition for limited supermarket access is 500 people in a low income tract where urban members are more than a mile and rural shoppers are more than 10 miles to a full service store. It is the fourth update since 2010 and the first to include Alaska and Hawaii.

The big take away: about 40 million Americans live without easy access to healthy food options.

Take Parkside, Belmont and Mantua neighborhoods of West Philadelphia. Together they are home to roughly 48,755 residents. Virtually all the blocks are very densely populated, 66% Black and almost half the people had an annual income of $25,000 in 2021, the latest data available.

This was some sloppy writing. Did Miss Hazeltom mean that $25,000 was the median income?

While this is the neighborhood many traditional stores would overlook, it is the type of neighborhood that the LSA study showed was in desperate need of a supermarket.

OK, why would “many traditional stores” overlook those neighborhoods? The author noted that “Virtually all the blocks are very densely populated,” which means less available area to put in a ten-acre supermarket. The neighborhoods are mostly poor, and grocery stores “operate on razor-thin profit margins. The industry average is between one and three percent, far below other retail sectors. With such lean margins, grocery stores rely on high sales volume and inventory turnover to thrive.” Then you throw in Philly’s crime rate, and the obvious question is easy to determine: how could a supermarket make a profit there?

Supermarkets were once associated with suburbs, and by the 1970s seven out of every ten food dollars were spent there. But also supermarkets did not place their businesses in low-income communities which lead to real consequences.

This paragraph alone tells you just how poor Miss Hazelton’s article was. The source she hyperlinked told her that grocery stores in Philly were mostly the ‘corner grocery store’ type, operating in the rowhouse neighborhoods, yet somehow, she couldn’t figure out that those neighborhood structures dictated the kinds of grocery stores that were there. In more rural areas, we had “general stores” before supermarkets were developed, and many lament that so few of those old general stores exist. Alas! The old general store that was near where I now live went out of business, became someone’s auto repair shop for a while, and is now a small volunteer fire station. Kroger and Giant and Aldi forced those old country general stores out of business, but in the suburbs and rural areas, there was the physical room for supermarkets.

Perhaps it’s as simple as the reporter having more of an agenda than an understanding of economics and business.

Political speech by public school teachers

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Having been incorporated by the Supreme Court to apply to state and municipal governments as well, it presents a high bar to governments to restrict speech. However, one place in which governments, and employers, can restrict speech is when the speaker is at work; no one reasonably holds that an employee could harm his employer through his at-work speech. We also have laws prohibiting government employees from political activities while working at their jobs.

Well, this story caught my eye:

Central Bucks says teacher’s anti-Israel social media posts don’t violate policies. Some parents say he’s ‘brainwashing’ kids.

Youssef Abdelwahab, a Spanish teacher and adviser to Central Bucks West’s Muslim Student Association, has posted extensively on social media criticizing Israel.

by Maddie Hanna | Saturday, March 16, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

A Central Bucks West High School teacher did not break district rules with his anti-Israel advocacy, district officials said this week after reviewing complaints by parents that his social media posts spread antisemitic content and inspired a Muslim student group to do the same.

Complaints about Youssef Abdelwahab, a Spanish teacher and adviser to the high school’s Muslim Student Association, were investigated by the Central Bucks School District, according to acting superintendent James Scanlon, who said he couldn’t provide details on personnel matters.

“There were no policy violations,” Scanlon said.

Several parents criticized Abdelwahab during a school board meeting Tuesday night, accusing him of “brainwashing” students through an Instagram account set up for a business he runs selling durag head coverings with designs inspired by kaffiyehs, a traditional Arab headdress viewed by supporters of the Palestinian cause as a symbol of fighting for Palestinian rights. Abdulwahab’s critics have also circulated a 45-page letter addressed to Scanlon that called for his firing.

So far, that’s just news, and while I completely and unambiguously support Israel, I also support Mr Abdelwahab’s First Amendment rights to believe and say and publish whatever foolishness he wants.

But I do not support him being allowed to do so in school.

Very far down:

Teachers’ speech has been controversial in Central Bucks in recent years. The new Democrat-led board recently rolled back a policy enacted by the previous Republican majority that barred teachers from advocating to students about “partisan, political or social policy issues.” The measure was criticized as targeting Pride flags and support for LGBTQ students.

Odd how it doesn’t seem to have been criticized as having prohibited teachers supporting Donald Trump or conservative policies. Those have as little place in the public schools as supporting homosexuality and transgenderism.

The letter to district officials charged that Abdelwahad had violated that policy while it still was in effect, alleging that he “advocated to students” through his Instagram account and his role with the Muslim Student Association.

The letter highlighted a poster at the high school for a Feb. 27 event hosted by the association encouraging students to protest the state’s financial support for Israel. The poster invited students to “collectively write a letter to PA state treasurer listing ways we can better use the $$ here in PA, rather than for killing more innocents in Gaza.”

Under the direction of another teacher, Central Bucks students wrote letters in support of Israel, according to a former Central Bucks West student who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting. “The situation is deeply insensitive to our Palestinian students,” said the former student, Ginny Morgan, who came to the U.S. as a Syrian refugee and described being bullied and targeted by jokes about 9/11 while a student in the district.

It ought to be obvious: teachers should not be pushing students politically in either direction.

Morgan also pushed back on criticism of students wearing kaffiyehs, which the letter to Scanlon described as popularized by former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Wearing a keffiyeh is “hate speech that is made to evoke a fear reaction in Jewish and Israeli students when they see it,” the letter said, citing case law to contend that student free speech — while largely protected — is not unlimited in public schools.

So, it seems that precious little feelings on both sides are being hurt. But unless the school is going to mandate uniforms, students can wear kaffiyehs if they wish . . . and kippahs as well, though the article did not mention them. The two are different in one respect: a kaffiyeh is a political symbol, while a kippah is a religious one. High school students are not exactly known for their sense of moderation.

If Mr Abdelwahad is stupid enough to support the rapists and murderers in Hamas, out-of-school, that’s his right. But the district does need to be monitoring more closely the political speech of teachers and staff while in school.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

Could Daniel Pearson be a conservative? Whether he realized it or not, he was pushing "broken windows" policing

I have said that my good friend Daniel Pearson — OK, OK, I think he knows who I am, but we’ve never met other than in debates on Twitter — is an editorial writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and that makes him a liberal, but he’s not a far left whacko, and conservatives can actually talk to him. And, other than the fact that he appears to be holding a disgusting Philly cheesesteak in his Twitter biography photo — a hot, freshly baked Philly pretzel would be more than acceptable, but cheesesteaks are vile — I pretty much like him.

But this morning, I had to consider that, Heaven forfend!, he might actually be a conservative! He tweeted:

The idea that people skip fares because they don’t have the cash isn’t supported by any evidence.

People skip fares because they are entitled jerks. Period. That’s why so many fare evaders are also smoking and assaulting people on transit.

Then:

And:

Honestly, Penn and Drexel should crack down on these students. There’s no excuse for disrespecting your host city.

I could have written that, and as both of our regular readers know, I’m as evil a reich-wing conservative as they come!

OK, OK, I know: Mr Pearson is no conservative, but if he’s a Democrat, he’s at least a moderate Democrat, the kind of people conservatives could respect, even if we disagreed with him on some issues. He, or at least the Editorial Board for which he does most of the writing, clearly despises former President Trump, and there’s the problem that even moderate Democrats supporting other Democrats enables the far-left of that party — Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema and perhaps even John Fetterman, I’m referring to you — but if we’ll never get the moderate Democrats to become Republicans, at least their existence within a party which sometimes seems to have gone completely off the rails of the sensibility train somewhat restrains the hard left impulses.

The Philadelphia Daily News article Mr Pearson linked:

SEPTA: Felonies down after crackdown on fare-evaders

New stats from SEPTA show that an increased focus on busting fare-jumpers has helped curb crime in the subways.

by Vinny Vella | February 5, 2015 | 3:01 AM EST

MICHAEL, a Frankford teen, is a poster boy for all the wrong reasons.

Last year, Michael – a pseudonym, because most of his offenses were committed as a juvenile – was cited 15 times in six months for hopping onto a SEPTA train without paying, law-enforcement sources said.

It got so bad, one SEPTA Transit Police officer told the Daily News, that the cashiers at his most frequently visited stations began to recognize him and would tip off police before he even approached their windows.

In November, six days after his 18th birthday, Michael was hit with his first fare-evasion citation as an adult. Three weeks later, he was cited again, this time with an added charge of resisting arrest, according to court records.

Did “Michael” do something really radical like go to jail for his (alleged) crimes? We know that District Attorney Larry Krasner and his minions would almost certainly not do anything like that to him, but reporter Vinny Vella’s article was written in 2015, when Michael Nutter was Mayor, Charles Ramsey was Police Commissioner, and Seth Williams was District Attorney. Under those three gentlemen, Killadelphia’s homicide total in the previous year was 248, and if it spiked to 280 the next year, it had steadily come down during their tenure.

Now, he’s seemingly straightened up and flying right: He hasn’t been arrested since.

And to hear SEPTA tell it, cracking down on fare-evaders like Michael – who authorities say also has been involved in at least two cellphone thefts – has done wonders for reducing felonies committed on the city’s subways.

“People jumping turnstiles are not heading to the library or going to see grandmom,” said Chief Thomas Nestel, head of SEPTA’s Transit Police. “They’re getting on the system to engage in activity that is either criminal or disorderly.”

There’s more at the original, but this is just more evidence that “broken windows” policing works. We don’t know if “Michael” stopped using SEPTA, or just started paying the fare to keep the Transit Police away from him. But the crime numbers dropped overall, and that does follow the greater enforcement of fare evasion.

More, “Michael’s” fare evasion as a juvenile didn’t seem to do much to him, but once he became an adult, and got a resisting arrest charge added to his offenses, his behavior changed. And this shows just how badly Mr Krasner’s leniency has affected the City of Brotherly Love. We have previously noted the Burholme SEPTA bus stop shooting, and how at least three of the four (alleged) shooters — three did the shooting, while a fourth drove the stolen getaway car — had previous juvenile offenses which could and should have had them already behind bars, but did not. Harsher treatment might not have mentally and morally reformed them, but at least putting criminals behind bars means that they are not out on the streets committing crimes! Had Mr Krasner and his office treated the three Burholme (alleged) shooters more seriously, there might have been eight fewer people shot in Philly twelve days ago.

Who knows? Perhaps Dayemen Taylor, deliberately targeted and murdered at another SEPTA bus stop just two days previously, would still be with us. We don’t know that yet, there’s no public information on the Ogontz shootings perpetrators has been made public, and we don’t know if they were previous offenders, but I’d bet euros to eclairs — my version of dollars to doughnuts — that yup, they have previous records.

Mr Pearson? Whether he realized it or not, he, too, was advocating “broken windows” policing, going after the small-time, first time, ‘lower’ offense level malefactors, before they reached the level of shooting, and sometimes killing, other people. Murder, and attempted murder, are not normally entry-level crimes. It doesn’t always work, individually, because prison isn’t something which normally makes people better, but it can be something that at least encourages them not to do the stuff that would send them back to prison.

This is what happens when you don’t lock up criminals! At least three of the Burholme shooters were previously treated leniently, and learned the lesson that they'll always get away with crime.

As we reported in this comment, the Philadelphia Police had identified the fourth suspect in the Five Points mass shooting, and gave that suspect, a 17-year-old juvenile, until Wednesday morning to surrender to police, or they would release his name and photo. He didn’t surrender, and federal marshals did what they said they’d do.

 

Marshals identify 4th suspect in Burholme bus stop shooting that wounded 8 teenagers

Asir Boone, 17, is wanted on attempted murder and related charges in the March 6 shooting at Rising Sun and Cottman Avenues.

by Jesse Bunch | Wednesday, March 13, 2024 | 2:12 PM EDT | Updated: 4:53 PM EDT

U.S. Marshals released information Wednesday about the fourth suspect in the Burholme shooting that left eight high school students injured last week, as law enforcement officials urged the teenager to turn himself in.

Asir Boone, 17, is wanted on attempted murder and related charges, according to a statement from the U.S. Marshals Service.

A $5,000 reward is being offered for information leading to Boone’s arrest. The Marshals Service said that Boone frequents the Olney neighborhood and that his last known address was in Germantown.

Shockingly enough, the tweet with the suspect’s name and photo was published on the newspaper’s online story.

I stated three days ago:

The two identified suspects are just 18 years old, and no one has exposed any adult criminal records on them, but no one would be surprised if there are sealed juvenile records.

It was hardly a difficult prediction to make!

The photo of Mr Boone is a police mugshot, dated last year, so this fine young gentlemen had been arrested at least once previously.

Well, my good friend, Sgt Mark Fusetti did some digging!

Note that Sgt Fusetti only identified two of the accused, and only as Suspects #1 and #2. That leads me to suspect that these juvenile records were not officially released, but leaked by someone. I don’t know that, but it’s a reasonable assumption. And now we know that the fourth suspect, young Mr Boone, was also, to use the euphemism, ‘known to the police.’

So, “Suspect #1” had a 2021 charge, for which he received a diversionary judgement, so no criminal conviction. The following year he was caught with a stolen car, and received probation. Then, at some later point, he was charged with receiving stolen property, for which he has not yet been tried.

“Suspect #2” was arrested for receiving stolen property and a firearms charge, and was put on probation just six days before the Burholme bus shooting. It would seem rather obvious that District Attorney Larry Krasner and his minions’ lenient treatment of arrested juveniles hasn’t worked to, as he claims in his Twitter bio, “make us safer.”

We noted, about three weeks ago, that The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to two activists, who claimed “Locking teens up won’t make our city safer. It will have the opposite effect, and here’s why.” Well, at least three of the four suspects were not locked up, after committing serious crimes, with two of them having possessed firearms illegally, and they (allegedly) worked together to shoot up a SEPTA bus stop, apparently targeting at least one person, and wounding eight, one very seriously. At least three of the four (alleged) Burholme shooters were not locked up when caught previously, and the police recovered at least one Glock with an extended magazine and a full auto switch modification.

And yet, too many people assume that the only solution to stop youth crime is to lock children up long term.

While there are times when detaining teenagers is warranted, it cannot be the first and only response if we really want to end violence, because it doesn’t address the reasons so many kids are committing crimes in the first place.

Actually, it can. The criminal who is incarcerated or not incarcerated is not the only one who is learning a lesson here. The criminal, teenaged or otherwise, who is not incarcerated, who is treated as leniently “suspects #1 and 2”, and Asir Boone, were, learns the lesson that he’ll always get cut a break; that’s not a lesson the article authors have contemplated.

It’s also the people around the malefactors who learn a lesson, the lesson being either that, hey, these guys got busted, but were let go, so I’ll get let off, too, or the lesson that, dang, my buddies got busted and drew ten years in the state pen. The teenaged delinquents the authors contemplate getting whatever services and education that they expect might get that, were they to get their way, but the kids around the leniently treated criminals won’t; they’ll only see that their buddies got away with it.

Mr Krasner and his liberal minions are responsible for the (alleged) shooters being out on the streets, but the District Attorney and his office are not the only ones responsible. The leftists like the two activists just cited, and thousands of other Philadelphians who excuse crimes — at least when those crimes don’t affect them! — and who voted for Mr Krasner are also responsible.
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When the media play Nurse Ratched, be Randle Patrick McMurphy!

The First Street Journal is committed to doing something really, really radical, and that is telling the truth. In the pursuit of that, I have published our Stylebook,[1]I give complete permission to anyone else who likes our Stylebook to adopt it as his own, with the appropriate reference, of course! something rarely done these days. In it, I noted:

Those who claim to be transgender will be referred to with the names, honorifics, and pronouns appropriate to the sex of their birth; the site owner does not agree with the cockamamie notion that anyone can simply ‘identify’ with a sex which is not his own, nor that any medical ‘treatment’ or surgery can change a person’s natural sex; all that it can do is physically mutilate a person.

Our Stylebook was first published on November 12, 2020, so this is not a new thing for this website. But USA Today seems to think we are hurting other people by telling the truth.

‘A matter of physical safety’: What it means to deadname someone and the impact it makes

by Clare Mulroy | Monday, March 11, 2024 | 6:02 AM EDT | Updated: 9:57 AM EDT

Merriam-Webster named “authentic” its 2023 Word of the Year, but other top contenders included “indict,” “rizz” and “deadname.” These words reflect increased search and cultural impact.

“Deadnaming” is one word that’s coming up on the campaign trail – the local one, that is. In Ohio, three out of four transgender candidates have been challenged or disqualified based on an elections law that penalizes candidates who don’t put their former names on petitions, the Associated Press reported.

But what is a deadname and what does it mean to call someone by it?

Deadnaming is when someone refers to a transgender or nonbinary person by a name they used before transitioning. This is often the name they were assigned at birth, also called a deadname.

In other words, it is telling the truth! Bradley Manning might really, really, really believe that he’s a woman named “Chelsea,” and he actually got his name changed legally, but he’s not a woman, and never will be. Referring to him as “Chelsea” is lying, not just to him, but to yourself.

Deadnaming can be intentional or unintentional. Both instances cause harm.

“It isn’t just a matter of comfort (for trans people), it’s a matter of physical safety,” Olivia Hunt, the policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality told USA TODAY. “How you address someone tells them a lot about how you view them as a person and also communicates to other people how they should treat that person.”

So, it seems that Miss Mulroy believes that I should deliberately lie, not only to be polite, but to not do so is a “matter of physical safety” for the ‘transgendered.’ Sorry, but deliberately lying is not polite. This isn’t a matter of “Do these jeans make me look fat?” kind of questions, but ones of objective reality.

In the year 2525, if man is still alive, when an anthropologist digs up the grave of Chad Malloy, a ‘transgender’ writer who calls himself “Parker,” as the anthropologist is trying to figure out what society was like in the early 21st century, before the nuclear devastation of World War III, he will examine the remains scientifically. Five hundred years from now, the soft tissues will have long decayed away, and the anthropologist will have just the skeleton. He will examine the structure of the pelvis, and write down in his notes — perhaps with a quill pen and ink on parchment; who knows how much we will have recovered from the war? — “The subject was male,” which will be an objective conclusion based on the scientific fact that males and females have different pelvic structures.

And if there is still some recoverable DNA from the remains, and the technology still exists to examine that, the anthropologist will discover that the subject has XY, rather than XX chromosomes, and will again write in his notes, “The subject was male.” This will be an objective fact.

There are no federal laws surrounding deadnaming, though local and state legislature have moved in both directions in recent years – some providing legal security for trans and nonbinary individuals’ name and pronoun usage and others forcing them to use deadnames in school settings.

In 2021, California became the first state to ban colleges from deadnaming students on university records. Social media apps have updated their use guidelines to ban deadnaming. In 2023, Discord added deadnaming and misgendering to its hate speech guidelines. TikTok banned both in 2022. Twitter, on the other hand, quietly rolled back its former policy against deadnaming and misgendering in April 2023.

We have previously reported on how The New York Times gave major OpEd space to Andrew Marantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker, to tell us that Free Speech Is Killing Us, and to Mr Malloy to tell us How Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech. It seems as though the guardians of the so-called Fourth Estate just don’t like interlopers! Greg Bensinger, a Times Editorial Board member, wrote that “Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place,” because Mr Musk was significantly loosening the editorial censorship on Twitter, was allowing more actual freedom of speech. Heaven forfend!

And now Miss Mulroy, who did go further to tell readers the legal difficulties the ‘transgendered’ face in trying to change their documents, is telling us that simply telling the truth, something I always do, is seriously harming the ‘transgendered.’ Sorry, but nope, I do not go along with that, and I will not cease telling the truth.

George Orwell wrote, in his dystopian novel 1984, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” What Miss Mulroy, and so many others in the credentialed media, are telling us is that we must reject objective truth, and go along with the subjective claims of the mentally ill. The inmates are running the asylum, and the staff are going right along with it. When the government and the credentialed media play Nurse Ratched, be Randle Patrick McMurphy!

References

References
1 I give complete permission to anyone else who likes our Stylebook to adopt it as his own, with the appropriate reference, of course!