Category Archives: Culture

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Harvard grad enters the unemployment line

We have previously noted the idiocy of Bud Light’s Vice President for Marketing Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid’s choice to use Dylan Mulvaney, the homosexual male who claims he’s a girl, and has been using a “365 Days of Girlhood” presentation — which I refuse to link — which completely mocks stereotypes of how real girls act, as the brand’s spokesthing. Well, now the digested food appears to have hit the air circulation device:

Bud Light’s Marketing Leadership Undergoes Shakeup After Dylan Mulvaney Controversy

Alissa Heinerscheid, who has led the brand since June, takes leave of absence and is replaced by Budweiser global marketing VP Todd Allen

by Jon Springer | Friday, April 21, 2023

Anheuser-Busch InBev has changed marketing leadership for Bud Light in the wake of controversy over the brand sending a can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney with her (sic) face on it.

Alissa Heinerscheid, marketing VP for the brand since June 2022, has taken a leave of absence, the brewer confirmed, and will be replaced by Todd Allen, who was most recently global marketing VP for Budweiser.

I did suggest, in the previous article, that Mrs Heinerscheid had made a “Career Limiting Mistake.” 🙂 Continue reading →

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There’s no statute of limitations on stupidity

My old Bible, using an Israeli 20 shekel note as a bookmark.

Those who know me know that I am not just Catholic in name only, but a Mass every Sunday Catholic, and occasionally attend weekday Mass as well. I have article tags for the Catholic Church and Catholic Priesthood. And the last thing I want to see are more sexual abuse cases among the priesthood revealed.

Philly archdiocese accused of covering up sex abuse complaints against priest who allegedly found a new victim in Nashville

“If there was ever a case of reckless disregard for the safety of the public and parishioners,” said lawyers representing a woman now suing church officials over an alleged cover-up, “it’s this one.”

by Jeremy Roebuck | Thursday, April 20, 2023

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia is facing new accusations that it covered up sexual misconduct, this time involving a former priest who allegedly forced himself on multiple women and told them the unwanted encounters were “special trials” ordained by God.

In court filings this week, a 27-year-old woman said church officials’ failure to disclose previous complaints against the Rev. Kevin Barry McGoldrick enabled abuse she endured after he was transferred from Philadelphia to Nashville in 2013.

Even after the Philadelphia archdiocese had substantiated her claims that McGoldrick had plied her with bourbon and then sexually assaulted her while he was serving as a college chaplain in Tennessee, she said, church officials here still refused to acknowledge they’d received reports years earlier of his involvement in similar misconduct.

The woman, now living in Virginia and identified in court filings only as Jane Doe, made those accusations in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that seeks hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages from church officials and McGoldrick himself in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

There’s more at the original, but the important date is that Fr McGoldrick was transferred from Philadelphia to the Diocese of Nashville in 2013. Msgr. William J. Lynn, once a secretary for Cardinal Anthony Bevilaqua, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, was convicted in June of 2012 for his role in transferring priests accused of sexual misconduct to other parishes, and though that conviction was twice overturned, the Monsignor was behind bars in 2013.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Archbishop of Philadelphia from 2003 to 2011, had his resignation upon reaching 75 accepted by Pope Benedict XVI, but, as The New York Times noted, his resignation was tainted by the priestly abuse scandal. The Times had also noted that the District Attorney’s office had “been investigating the archdiocese aggressively since 2002“.

So, how is it that, in 2013, with the previous Archbishop having his resignation accepted under an ethical cloud, Msgr Lynn behind bars for his role in identifying ‘problem’ priests, priests Edward Avery and Charles Engelhardt in prison for the sexual abuse of minors, as was Catholic school teacher Bernard Shero, that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, then under Archbishop Charles Chaput, allegedly knew of Fr McGoldrick’s reported sexual abuses transferred him to Nashville?

Lawyers for the accuser say former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput failed to disclose earlier investigations into McGoldrick and signed off on his transfer to Nashville in 2013. That move came two years after Pope Benedict XVI had tapped Chaput to take over the Philadelphia archdiocese and oversee reform efforts after a series of damning grand jury investigations highlighted its failures in handling clergy sex abuse complaints.

Let me be clear here: there have been no criminal charges or convictions in this case: “Jane Doe” has filed a lawsuit, something which is subject to a much lower standard of proof, the “preponderance of the evidence,” and that lawsuit has not gone to trial. At the moment, Archbishop Chaput and Fr McGoldrick are neither legally guilty nor adjudicated as responsible for any wrongdoing. I’d like to believe that Miss “Doe” is making a fraudulent claim, which is certainly a possibility. Archbishop Chaput, having been appointed to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in large part for his previous strong handling of such cases while Archbishop of Denver. It would seem improbable that he would have approved that transfer of a known sexual abuser.

However, if Miss “Doe’s” claims are valid, it might be a slightly different case. The article states that she is 27 years old now, which means she would have been 17 or 18 at the time Fr McGoldrick was transferred, and she might have been legally an adult at the time she claims she was abused by the priest.

But my wanting the claim to be false does not preclude the possibility that it could be true. And while I want it to be false, there are a lot of people out there who will be convinced that the accusations are true, because it has happened so often in the past.

If the accusation is true, it means that Archbishop Chaput and his subordinates in the Archdiocese learned absolutely nothing from not only what had happened in the past, but happened in the recent past. And our bishops have to know, and understand, this: there is exactly zero tolerance for this stuff among the public, and cover-ups just don’t work. With so many people hostile to the Church, and looking for wrongdoing, and with possible victims out there, this stuff will eventually be exposed.

There has to be zero tolerance in the Church for this, and everybody needs to know it. Actually, every priest and bishop in the Church does know it; they are all highly educated men, and they just aren’t stupid. But not being stupid overall does not mean that they can’t do stupid things, and trying to cover up for this stuff, regardless of how much they may like and respect their friends and colleagues in the priesthood, is just plain stupid.

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People are investing in nice housing in parts of Philly, but if the city doesn’t address rampant crime, such will eventually cease.

Sometimes the real news is found in sections of the newspaper — and yes, I’m a newspaper reader, even if it’s just the digital editions! — in which you don’t expect it. From the Real Estate section of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Apartment building proposed under the El adds even more transit-accessible housing in Fishtown

The 114-apartment building with a restaurant is planned for Front Street.

by Jale Blumgart | Thursday, April 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

A 114-unit apartment project is planned immediately adjacent to the Market-Frankford Line at 1440 N. Front St. on the border between Fishtown and South Kensington.

This is the latest, and largest, project from Archive Development, a new real estate company that’s been building in the Fishtown area since 2020. The project will contain 2,000 square feet of retail space, which the company wants to go to a restaurant.

“Front is one of the only streets in Fishtown where you can truly build with high density,” said Henry Siebert, cofounder of Archive. “We’ve seen it transition from a former industrial street with warehouses to a true, viable commercial corridor. That’s what attracted us.”

Amenities include a seventh floor “sky lounge,” with a kitchenette and a roof deck. It will also include a gym, coworking spaces, a dedicated conference room, and a ground floor garden. There will be five studios, 93 one-bedroom units, and 16 two-bedroom units.

There’s more at the original, but that apartment building better have some outrageous soundproofing. Who would want the sound of the El outside their windows?

Fishtown has been gentrifying for years, enough to have attracted the attention of Forbes:

How Fishtown, Philadelphia Became America’s Hottest New Neighborhood

Peter Lane Taylor[1]I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs | May 2, 2018,09:52pm EDT

Every Friday afternoon at 5:30 pm the doors of “the El­”—one of America’s oldest elevated subways—swoosh open at Girard and Berks Street stations, unleashing a stampede of Millennials, yuppies, hipsters, entrepreneurs, and empty nesters onto Front Street.

As fast as the doors close, they scatter east down a maze of narrow streets swirling with trash, bumping shoulders with the occasional heroin addict and scrappers pushing shopping carts piled high with salvaged sheet metal. Nobody blinks.

A half dozen blocks away from their newly-built, half-million dollar townhomes, the lines twist out the doors at Pizzeria Beddia and Frankford Hall, two of Philadelphia’s hottest foodie spots. Across the street, Johnny Brenda’s is already packed—hosting as they have for over a decade one of America’s hottest indie rock bands. Mothers pushing strollers window shop past Lululemon along Frankford Avenue’s buzzing retail corridor fronted with wine bars, coffee shops, couture boutiques, yoga studios, a vintage motorcycle joint, and an Argentinian tango dance school.

Visually the dichotomies are jarring. Culturally the contradictions are even more confusing. Yet when the El disgorges its “New Fish” every afternoon it epitomizes the driving forces behind Fishtown’s warp-speed transformation, and the demographics fueling America’s new urban revolution.

There’s more at the original, including this photo, which I found interesting. Captioned as “An average night at Frankford Hall,” it shows the stereotypical young urban professionals at the Frankford Hall Hofbräu München German biergarten, a full courtyard of exclusively white — from what I could see — twenty-and-thirty-somethings. Philly is, overall, a very racially and ethnically diverse — and I’ve come to hate the word ‘diverse’ — cities, but, as the Inquirer previously reported, “Among the 30 biggest cities, Philadelphia is second only to Chicago in its level of residential segregation between Black and white residents, according to data from Brown University. Between Hispanic and white residents, it’s the sixth-most segregated.” And it’s only going to get worse.

But if Fishtown is gentrifying, an up-and-coming neighborhood, it’s right up against Kensington, Philly’s worst, or at least the one with the worst reputation, one so bad that the Mexican government used video of Kensington in an anti-drug ad campaign. And the 1440 North Front Street project is just 2.1 miles from the SEPTA elevated train station at Kensington and Allegheny Avenues.

Inquirer reporter Jake Blumgart spent a fair amount of space telling readers about the mass transit opportunities in the area, with this paragraph standing out:

Archive Development’s project on Front Street comes amid a construction boom directly adjacent to the Market Frankford elevated tracks. The El has struggled with low ridership, remote work trends, and a surge in antisocial behavior following the pandemic.

LOL! A “surge in antisocial behavior”? That’s a rather mild euphemism for shootings, assaults, and rampant drug use in SEPTA stations, with stations and transit cars filled with discarded needles.

There’s a choice that Philadelphia has to take, one which will determine the path our nation’s sixth largest city will follow. Will the city opt for actual law enforcement, and clean up Kensington and the Philadelphia Badlands, to enable further gentrification, wealth, and potential integration, or will it persist in non-enforcement, in excusing crime and leniently treating criminals, further depressing the depressed neighborhoods?

References

References
↑1 I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs
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The Amazoning of our lives

Having spent my professional career in the ready-mixed concrete industry, working Sundays was extremely rare, but it wasn’t completely unheard of. There was one year in which a company doing some serious work at the Ford assembly plant in Norfolk, while the plant was closed from Christmas through New Year’s Day, wanted concrete every day during that period, including Christmas and New Year’s Day. Being the man who always got the strange work assignments, I was the first plant manager asked to do the work. And yes, despite being salaried, I was paid extra for the Christmas and New Year’s Day shifts.

‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’? How a USPS worker’s fight over Sunday shifts could change your workplace.

Story by John Fritze, USA TODAY • Saturday, April 15, 2023 • 10:56 PM

Washington — Gerald Groff wanted to spend his Sundays at church. His employer, the U.S. Postal Service, wanted him delivering packages.

That simple dispute between an employee and his managers sparked one of the most significant religious cases to reach the Supreme Court in years – with the potential to shift the balance of power between employees and employers over weekend schedules, dress codes and how workers conduct themselves around colleagues.

Mr Groff, the article states further down, sought work with the USPS precisely because, as Vernon Dursley happily said in Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone, there’s “No post on Sundays.”

This one is a bit personal for us, because our younger daughter worked for the USPS in Versailles, Kentucky, as a temporary worker; she hadn’t gotten the actual civil service job yet. And yes, as she told me while I am writing this post, Sundays were required because the regular USPS workers refused to do them, but the Amazon contract required Sunday deliveries.

Now, why would USPS workers be working on Sundays? Because the Postal Service signed a contract to deliver packages for Amazon in 2013, and Amazon wanted packages delivered on Sundays. While USPS tried to give workers off at least one day a week, our daughter had to work 23 days straight for the Christmas rush in December if 2017.

The appeal raises a basic question with potentially sweeping consequences: How far must large employers go to accommodate the religious needs of their workers? For Groff, an Evangelical Christian who told his boss in 2017 that he wouldn’t cover Sunday shifts because of his faith, the answer became a personal and painful one.

“I lived under a cloud of thinking any day I could report to work…and then be told that I was terminated,” said Groff, a 45-year-old Pennsylvanian who resigned from the Postal Service in 2019. “Two years of just pretty much every day was tough.”

While his supervisors attempted to accommodate Mr Groff’s needs, they couldn’t always do so, and he wound up having missed 24 scheduled Sundays, and disciplinary actions against him started to mount.

For nearly five decades, similar disputes have been guided by a 1977 Supreme Court decision that allows employers to deny religious requests if they present more than a trivial cost. That standard, Groff’s attorneys say, means companies could decline to alter schedules to account for a sabbath or allow an employee’s religious dress in too many circumstances.

In practice, the government argues, the standard is often read by courts to require employers to accommodate such requests.

So, the feds are arguing that the standard does not need to be changed, because it is often read improperly, as requiring employers to do things which would have met Mr Groff’s religious needs. That’s one strange argument!

Groff is asking the Supreme Court to toss that standard. But his critics fear what the court’s conservative majority might come up with as a replacement. And they’re concerned that new standard could lead to workplace discrimination.

“There’s a huge can of worms that this opens up,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Letting people shift the cost of exercising their religion onto their co-workers in a way that harms their co-workers is the opposite of equality.”

Whenever you hear something from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, you can count on it: their message will be hostile to the free exercise of religion. Taking Rachel Laser’s statement at face value, one can easily make the argument that other accommodations, such as those for pregnant women, or for handicapped employees which require other employees to work harder or longer, would also be “the opposite of equality.” Would Miss Laser and Americans United state that a company could force a black employee to work on Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth, or Kwanzaa, because not to do so could burden other employees?

The court will hear arguments in Groff v. DeJoy on Tuesday.

Actually, I expect a narrower ruling, because Mr Groff, who was employed by the United States Postal Service, was being required to work for Amazon as well. More, it will depend on what he was told during his pre-employment interview. Was he told about Sunday deliveries for Amazon, and, if he was, was he told that the USPS would work around his religious faith? Did Mr Groff inform the USPS prior to being hired that he could not work on Sundays?

I’m old enough to remember Sunday “Blue Laws,” or Sunday closing laws, which kept many businesses closed. Things which were deemed essential, such as grocery stores and pharmacies and, of course, hospitals, were exempted. Ira P Robbins argued, in 2022, that Sunday closing laws, while held constitutional by the Supreme Court in McGowan v Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), they have effectively become obsolete, as exceptions to closing laws increased, some states repealed them, and the public wanted to shop on Sundays. Since McGowan turned on the states wanting to provide a day of rest as a societal good independent of religion, with so much of the public declining to take Sunday as anything other than go, go, go, that argument would fail today.

But perhaps it shouldn’t fail. Does Amazon really need to have things delivered on Sunday, and do people really need to have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer or a bird feeder or a new pair of shoes on Sunday? Did we not find out, during the COVID-19 panicdemic, that certain businesses were not only non-essential on Sundays, but for the rest of the week as well?

I thought that the blue laws were kind of silly when I was a teenager. Now, maybe not so much; we can use a day to slow down.

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Did Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth really not know about the Dylan Mulvaney boondoggle?

When your company does something just boneheadedly stupid, always blame a low-level staffer, even if that low-level staffer holds the title Vice President of Marketing.

My good friend, and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach noted how Anheuser-Busch is trying to backtrack away from the idiocy of using ‘transgender activist’ Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesthing:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Realizes They Really Messed Up, Issues Statement Which Pleased No One

By William Teach | Saturday, April 15, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

Brendan Whitworth must have taken a look at the plummeting stock, and, more importantly, the plummeting sales, and decided to do a little damage control:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Issues Statement After Dylan Mulvaney Beer Can Scandal: ‘We Never Intended to Be Part of a Discussion that Divides People’

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a mea culpa Friday in the wake of the company’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a former gay man who now claims to be a woman.

The move sparked backlash across the nation as the company became the latest to focus on woke social issues — namely, the radical left’s attempts to promote woke gender ideology into society by injecting it into schools and placing it on the forefront of favorite brands in corporate America. According to reports, Anheuser-Busch lost more than $6 billion in market value following its promotional campaign with the transgender TikTok star as tensions rose and boycotts ensued.

On Friday, Whitworth issued a statement, contending that the company “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.”

Translation: “We were f(ornicating) clueless!”

Anheuser-Busch is headquartered in St Louis, and the Missouri state legislature has been fighting over proposed legislation to prohibit ‘transition’ quackery for minors; did no one there read the St Louis Post-Dispatch? Does no one there pay any attention to the local news broadcasts?

The St Louis Dispatch, rescued from bankruptcy by Joseph Pulitzer in 1878, and merged with John Dillon’s St Louis Post, to become the Post and Dispatch, soon the Post-Dispatch quickly became the city’s most important newspaper, and eventually the largest in the region. It’s a regional newspaper that no one can ignore, and if the paper’s editorial position appears to support ‘gender affirming care,’ the newspaper publishes a fair amount of coverage of the political fight over it. Local television stations also cover the topic.

The leadership of Anheuser-Busch can’t not have known that this is a controversial topic, even if some, or all, of them come down on the side of transgenderism stupidity, even if some, or all, of them swallow the whole idea not just hook, line, and sinker, but all the way up to deep throat the rod-and-reel. But someone in the company decided to make Mr Mulvaney the face of Bud Light advertising.

So far, that decision has been attributed to Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, who said she had a mandate to keep America’s best-selling beer from losing customers, to expand its customer base.

I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light.

Advertisers have been doing that for decades. We began to see ads including minorities in the 1970s, and many, many ads these days show groups of people who are racially integrated, in an attempt to appeal to all races and ethnicities and show growing friendship. The New York Times was reporting on an increase in interracial couples being shown in advertising five years ago.

But Dylan Mulvaney? He’s not just claiming to be a ‘transgender girl,’ but his shtick is actual mockery of the whole notion; rather than trying to fit in as a woman, his act is one which is a wholly over-the-top of every silly stereotype there is. Mrs Heinerscheid, who is a graduate of Harvard University, was either too clueless or too stupid to see that using Mr Mulvaney as a brand spokesthing would cause a backlash, or she just plain didn’t care, and wanted to use her position to push an agenda, when her job is to sell more beer.

I’ve got to ask: did Chief Executive Officer Whitworth really not know about Mrs Heinerscheid’s brilliant idea? It’s not as though a lot of other people didn’t know: television commercials had to be produced, cans with Mr Mulvaney’s picture were made, checks were cut, contracts signed, all of which involves people, a lot of people, people including attorneys.

We don’t know if Mrs Heinerscheid will be, as Mr Teach suggested, promoted to customer, but something like this would seem to fall well into the category of a Career Limiting Mistake. A corporate Vice President, coming up with an idea as controversial as this one, would normally protect himself by taking it up the ladder, crediting himself with the decision but getting feedback from his bosses.

Yet Mr Whitworth is distancing himself from Mrs Heinerscheid’s decisions. That’s kind of what some people would do when something like this blows up in their faces, leaving Mrs Heinerscheid twisting in the wind.

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If you’re scared, say you’re scared! But don't be afraid of stupid stuff.

That things get stupid following a mass shooting, such as the one in Louisville, or school shooting like the one in Nashville, is expected. But there’s a point at which stupidity gets squared. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Parents say Bala Cynwyd fifth graders texted about who should be shot in the next school shooting

“Everyday i think of school shootings and hope the most people die,” one student wrote, according to a screenshot of an exchange shared by two parents.

by Maddie Hanna | Friday, April 14, 2023

Three weeks ago, parents say fifth graders at Bala Cynwyd Middle School had a conversation over text about school shootings.

Bala Cynwyd is not exactly a depressed area. The mean household income is $128,94574.9% of residents 25 or older have at least a baccalaureate degree, 76.8% of homes are occupied by their owners with a median value of $568,200. 77.1% of the population are non-Hispanic whites.

These aren’t disadvantaged kids stuck in a rotten school. Unlike the disasters that Philadelphia Mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty champions, Bala Cynwyd Middle School ranks 8th best out of 877 middle schools in Pennsylvania, with 87% of students ranked as grade-level proficient in reading, and 71% in math.

“Everyday i think of school shootings and hope the most people die,” one student wrote, according to a screenshot of the exchange shared by two parents. The exchange continued: “I hope the following people will get shot,” before listing names that were blacked out.

The parents who provided the exchange to the Inquirer said they knew who the listed names were — because one was their child.

The Lower Merion School District has not informed most parents of the details of the incident — referring in a message to the community Thursday to “text messages that included threatening language.”

Lower Merion police assisted the district in investigating, “and concluded that no credible threat to the safety of the school community ever existed related to those text messages,” Acting Superintendent Megan Shafer said in the message Thursday.

I turn 70 in just a few more days, but I can still remember some of the [insert slang term for feces here] that my classmates and I said when we were middle school aged. Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders aren’t exactly the type for serious plotting.

To reach that conclusion, Shafer said the district followed its threat assessment process — using a model developed by University of Virginia researchers involving “multiple data points” and “various staff members and outside agencies, including law enforcement when indicated.”

That isn’t assurance enough, said the parents who spoke to the Inquirer, who asked not to be named to protect the anonymity of their child. They said other parents were similarly frustrated following a town hall Wednesday night with Shafer and Bala Cynwyd’s principal, Jeffrey Hunter, during which the parents said administrators disclosed that students involved in sending the messages would be allowed to return to school Monday.

“If you’re going to deem this to not be a credible threat …there still needs to be a little more transparency as to why parents should feel safe with these children being readmitted,” one of the parents said.

Paranoia much?

Look, I get it: with all of the sensationalized stories in the media, some parents are just panicked. But just a little bit of self-awareness, of remembering the [insert slang term for feces here] that they said when they were those ages, ought to bring them to the realization that middle schoolers just say stuff, silly stuff, and stupid stuff. Heck, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades are when kids are going through puberty, and that only increases the stupidity.

Our society has been permeated with fear, oftentimes unreasoning fear. Don’t give in to fear.
___________________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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Oh, look! Helen Gym Flaherty is getting much of her financial support from people with no connection to Philadelphia! Socialists gotta socialist, and are trying to trash yet another big city

As critical as I have been of The Philadelphia Inquirer, I should note when they do good reporting.

Half the money collected by candidates for Philly mayor comes from outside the city

Some candidates in the crowded Democratic primary field have relied more than others on money from outside Philadelphia than others.

by Aseem Shukla and Anna Orso | Monday, April 10, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Philadelphia’s mayoral race has already drawn millions in fundraising. And half of it has come from outside the city.

Campaigns have already raised more than $17 million. Of that, $8 million comes from the candidates themselves. But an Inquirer analysis shows that of the $9.3 million given by actual donors:

  • About half of the money, at least $4.4 million, comes from donors in Philadelphia.
  • Roughly another quarter, at least $2.5 million, comes from donors elsewhere in the region.
  • The remainder, at least another $2.1 million, comes from donors outside the area.
  • A small fraction, under $100,000, came from small donations that campaigns don’t have to disclose, so the addresses of those donors is unknown.

Maria Quiñones-Sánchez recently withdrew from the race.

That there would be donors from the city’s suburbs is hardly surprising: many people who work in Philadelphia don’t live in the city themselves, but have a vested interest in how the city functions.

It’s interesting that former city Controller Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff is tied for the largest percentage raised from city residents, and has, by far, the smallest percentage raised from outside of the area. The Inquirer surprised me when, rather than the furthest left candidate, Helen Gym Flaherty, the Editorial Board instead endorsed Mrs McDuff.

But here’s the money paragraph from the newspaper:

More than the rest of the field, Helen Gym and Derek Green, both former City Council members, have raised money from donors outside the region entirely. Gym in particular has a national profile as a leading voice in the progressive movement, and has significant financial support from the American Federation of Teachers, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Over one-third of her money comes from donors outside the region.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Why Do Democrats Think They Can ‘Win’ the Crime Issue? Media bias misinforms the public about “gun violence.”

The Inquirer previously reported that the city’s teachers’ union has been one of Mrs Flaherty’s biggest supporters. As we previously reported, Mrs Flaherty has earned her reputation of being a major supporter of public schools, but one of her notable successes, keeping Edward T Steel Elementary School from becoming a charter school, hasn’t worked out all that well, as it is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, with 8% of students ranked as grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% as grade-level proficient in math.

So, why do I care? After all, I no longer work in Philadelphia and its suburbs, and don’t even live in Pennsylvania now. I care because I’ve seen the disastrous effects of big city liberalism, as the City of Brotherly Love has seen a tremendous spike in crime, with annual homicides more than doubling in fewer than ten years as the good people of Philly elected a mayor who is just plain tired of the job and a district attorney who doesn’t want to put criminals in jail. Chicago has suffered through the same things with outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, and just elected police-hating Brandon Johnson, who’s even further left than Miss Lightfoot to replace her as Mayor. Manhattan elected Alvin Bragg to be district attorney, and his chief assistant district Attorney, Meg Reiss has said, “We know incarceration doesn’t really solve any problems.” Me? I believe that our problem is not mass incarceration, but that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time.

One thing ought to be obvious: the criminal who is already locked up is not out on the streets, committing more crimes.

But Mrs Flaherty doesn’t seem to understand that. She strongly endorsed and campaigned with, George Soros-sponsored “restorative justice” District Attorney Larry Krasner, later saying, “I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels. We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.” She wants to do everything to increase public safety other than getting criminals off the streets! Yet Mrs Flaherty has been receiving a clear pile of money from public school teachers, who are the epitome of the socialist class, government employees who have no responsibility for actually being good at their jobs, and who seem to want to introduce every bit of #woke idiocy and sexual deviance to children.

The policies of the left, when put into government action, have proven to be actively harmful to our society and our civilization. That’s why I fret for Philadelphia, which is already suffering from such policies, and could well be poised to double-down on the stupidity.

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Once again, Joe Biden thinks that girls can be boys and boys can be girls

With several conservative states imposing common sense restrictions on the participation of males in women’s sports, it’s little surprise that the #woke Biden Administration wants to overrule them. From The New York Times:

School Sports Cannot ‘Categorically’ Ban Transgender Athletes, Under Biden Proposal

The proposed rules under Title IX would give schools flexibility for “fairness in competition” or for the possibility that participation could lead to injury.

By Sarah Mervosh and Remy Tumin | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | Updated 4:47 PM EDT

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

The Biden administration proposed a rule change on Thursday that would forbid schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes from teams that are consistent with their gender identities, but offered some flexibility for “fairness in competition” and other exceptions.

What does “fairness in competition” mean, and just who will be judging whether a particular local decision excluding the ‘transgendered’ from a particular women’s or girls’ sport for “fairness in competition” reasons can stand?

The proposed rule change would make “categorically” banning all transgender students from athletic teams that are consistent with their gender identities a violation of Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.

But it would also allow K-12 schools and universities to limit the participation of transgender students when including them could undermine fairness or potentially lead to sports-related injuries.

“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” Miguel Cardona, the U.S. Secretary of Education, said in a statement.

Also see: Deanna Fisher: Trans Violence Is Acceptable To The Left

There are a few, few sports in which males and females can compete on an even basis, sports such as curling or a university rifle team. But every sport in which physical strength, size, speed, quickness or endurance make a difference would mean that males who believe they are female are going to have a significant physical advantage over real females.

In one sense, this proposed regulation recognizes that there really are physical differences between males and females, and that those physical differences make a difference in sports.

The Department of Education said the proposal was meant to offer “much needed clarity” about how public schools, as well as colleges and universities, should handle an issue that has led to intense and often vociferous debate, particularly when it comes to the question of women’s sports.

That “intense and often vociferous debate” has occurred where it should, among the public at large and our elected representatives.

Under the proposed rules, which must undergo a period of public comment, elementary school students would generally be able to participate in school sports consistent with their gender identity. But for older students, questions of fairness and physicality could come into play.

No one really cares if boys and girls play kickball together in elementary school, but puberty changes everything. It would be nice if we had a bit more common sense in our federal government when it comes to subjects like these.

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Killadelphia: With people being murdered every single day, is it any surprise when people move out?

Homicides have been down in the City of Brotherly Love, with a pace below that of 2022, which ended the year with 516 murders, and 2021, which holds the record-shattering 562 killings. but ahead of 2020, in which there were 499 homicides. 2020 remains a special case, with population lockdowns, and the death in police custody of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl addled George Floyd, a death which occurred after March 30th, which led to a significant amount of civic unrest, demonstrations, riots, and killings.

2020 was also the year of the Census, and the Census found that Philadelphia has 1,603,797 residents, dating such on April Fool’s Day. Subsequent annual Census Bureau estimates are dated on July 1st. The Census Bureau estimated Philly’s population to be 1,576,251 as of July 1, 2021, according to their website, but The Philadelphia Inquirer is telling us that their guesstimate was higher, at 1,589,480.

That skews the math, but the more important math is how Philly’s population have declined since the Census. The Census, dated April 1, 2020, shows the city with 1,603,797 residents, which was down to 1,567,258 as of the beginning of July, 2022.  That’s a loss of 36,539 souls.

As of March 31, 2020, there had been 96 murders recorded in Philly; on June 30, 2022, there were 257 recorded killings in the city. That works out to 1,222 homicides over that period of time, or 3.34% of the city’s population loss!

Philly’s population dropped for a second year in a row, census data show

Experts caution two years does not a trend make.

by Ximena Conde and John Duchneskie | Thursday, March 30, 2023 | 5:09 AM EDT

In Philadelphia, it’s feeling a bit like 2014 — at least when it comes to the population count. That’s the last time the city had about 1.57 million residents.

2014 was also the last year the city had fewer than 250 homicides, 248 to be precise, following 246 the previous year. That was when Michael Nutter was Mayor, Seth Williams was District Attorney, and Charles Ramsey was Police Commissioner. Though the number spiked to 280 in 2015, Messrs Nutter’s and Ramsey’s last years in office, homicides spiked under Mr Nutter’s successor, Jim Kenney.

Newly released census estimates say Philly lost more than 22,000 residents between July 2021 and July 2022, a 1.4% drop and the largest one-year decline since 1977, which saw a loss of about 23,800.

I suppose that this depends on what number you use for 2021, given that the Census Bureau has obviously provided two. Perhaps the Bureau simply hasn’t updated their website.

The drop is the second in a row, after more than a decade of growth for the city, which peaked at 1.6 million residents in 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, it’s estimated the city lost more than 33,000 residents.

Various factors have been blamed for the drop, mainly the COVID-19 pandemic, but experts say Philadelphia isn’t on its way to becoming a ghost town, and suggest not panicking over short-term data.

I’m not sure how the blame could be “mainly the COVID-19 pandemic,” given that the article time frame begins on July 1, 2021, when yes, the city was laboring under the restrictions imposed by Mayor Kenney, which were harsher than most places, but the panicdemic — and no, that isn’t a typographical error; panicdemic is exactly how I see it — without mentioning the huge number of murders in the city. One of the writers, John Duchneskie, is the Inky’s Graphics Editor, who says his job is “wrangling data and pursuing visual storytelling by way of charts, maps, diagrams, and illustrations.” He is the Inquirer staffer who is one of the most aware of the homicide numbers, because he’s the one who has to plug in those numbers into data files and create the graphs and charts the newspaper uses. And while I’m a bit of a numbers geek myself, it wasn’t exactly difficult math to look up the number of homicides on the specified dates, and calculate numbers and percentages.

Think about that: 3.34% of Philadelphia’s entire population loss was due to murder.

Of course, it was surely higher than that. While 1,222 out of the 36,539 population loss were directly murdered, there has to have been a significant number of additional souls, family and friends of the murder victims, who just got the Hell out of Philly! How many would that have been? Well, only the Lord knows that, and he hasn’t told me the number.

Domestic migration, meanwhile, continued to drive the city’s population loss.

International migration in the period ending July 2022 had a net increase of about 5,000 people from the previous year, slowly rebounding from Trump-era immigration policies. Martin said Philadelphia’s decade of growth was largely driven by foreign-born residents coming to the city.

Meanwhile, among people relocating domestically in the year ending July 2022, an estimated 32,500 more people moved out of Philadelphia than in, almost double the domestic migration loss from 2021.

The influx of immigrants couldn’t offset the net loss in domestic movers, so the city saw a net loss of about 25,000 people because of international and domestic migration.

Translation: a lot of people who didn’t really know that much about Philadelphia, perhaps including foreign-born immigrants who had relatively little choice, moved in, but many, many more people, who did know Philly because they had lived there, got the heck out of Dodge!

This is the legacy of Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw. They are not the only ones, of course, but they are the executive leaders of the city, the ones whose day-to-day actions will make the city either a better place to live, or a worse one. Apparently a lot more people see the city as a worse place to live, not a better one.