Category Archives: Elections

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Lies, damned lies, and statistics The left use bogus numbers to try to make their case

Garbage in, garbage out: when you base your arguments on lies bad data, your arguments fall apart.

Mary Lou Marzian, former Kentucky House Representative for the previous District 34, and Honi Marleen Goldman, described as “a Kentucky activist,” and is, in fact, a pro-abortion agitator, were granted OpEd space in what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal, claiming that the General Assembly, Kentucky’s state legislature, is unfairly gerrymandered to harm the interests of the Commonwealth’s urban residents.

Fueled by dark money, Kentucky’s rural/urban divide hurts all of us | Opinion

by Mary Lou Marzian and Honi Goldman | Thursday, May 25, 2023 | 10:11 AM EDT | Updated: 12:23 PM EDT

Kentucky is comprised of 120 counties. In only two of those counties is there a major city, Louisville and Lexington (1.4 million and 517,000 respectively). Together these two key cities make up 44% of Kentucky’s population.

The citizens of Louisville and Lexington are diverse in race, religion, and ethnic origin. The population in Kentucky’s smaller towns and counties is primarily white and Christian.

The biggest concerns in the urban centers are crime, homelessness, and human rights. The rural areas focus on gun rights, “Family Values” and government overreach.

The issues for both sides are unique and fundamental to their respective populations.

Read more here.

One of the things about reading articles online is that the browser tabs can sometimes tell you more than the authors and editors want you to know. As originally saved, the article was entited “With misinformation, Ky’s urban/rural divide hurts us.” Someone, who would normally be the newspaper’s editor, changed the title, to blame “dark money”, and changed urban/rural to rural/urban. 🙂

The authors’ first paragraph gives us the “misinformation” with which the article was originally entitled. Louisville’s population is not 1.4 million and Lexington’s is not 517,000. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Louisville/Jefferson County’s population in the 2020 Census was 633,045, and the July 1, 2022 guesstimate is 624,444. The Census Bureau stated that Lexington/Fayette County’s population was 322,570 in the 2020 Census, and a guesstimated 320,347 as of July 1, 2022. The population of the entire state was given as 4,505,836 in the Census, and an estimated 4,512,310 last July.

Let’s do the math! 624,444 + 320,347 = 944,791. 944,791 ÷ 4,512,310 = 0.2094, or 20.94%.

So, no, those “two key cities” do not “make up 44% of Kentucky’s population.”

It has been suggested that Misses Marzian and Goldman were actually using the metropolitan statistical area concept for population numbers, and the Louisville metropolitan statistical area had a population of 1,395,855, close enough to the 1.4 million the authors claimed.

Also see: William Teach; Credentialed Media Is Losing Minds After Target Removes LGBT Material

But the metropolitan statistical area for Louisville includes Clark, Floyd, Harrison, and Washington counties in Indiana! Unintentionally or otherwise, Misses Marzian and Goldman were trying to include parts of Indiana in the Bluegrass State’s population, to reach their elevated count of 44%.

The Kentucky counties listed as part of the Louisville metropolitan statistical area are, along with Jefferson, Bullitt, Henry, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer, and Trimble. The authors contended that these were all urbanized counties, with urbanized interests: “crime, homelessness, and human rights.” But, in the 2020 presidential election, while Joe Biden carried Jefferson County 228,358 (59.06%) to 150,646 (38.96%) for President Trump, Mr Trump carried the other listed Kentucky counties, in the same order, by 73.12%, 72.05%, 59.65%, 63.93%, 76.42%, and 74.70%.

The counties listed as part of the Lexington/Fayette County metropolitan statistical area are Bourbon, Clark, Jessamine, Scott, and Woodford, and while Mr Biden carried Fayette County 90,600 (59.25%) to Mr Trump’s 58,860 (38.49%), President Trump carried the other listed counties, respectively, 64.16%, 65.11%, 65.05%, 61.33%, and 54.97%.

In the two United States Senate races, Mitch McConnell vs Amy McGrath Henderson in 2020, and Rand Paul vs Charles Booker in 2022, while the Democrat challenger carried Jefferson and Fayette counties, the Republican incumbent carried all of the others in their metropolitan statistical areas.

These are all statewide races; there are no gerrymandered districts.

Back to the original:

However, 75% of Kentucky State House Representatives, 77% State Senators, 83% of U.S. House Representatives and 100% of Kentucky’s U.S. Senators are making laws that affect nearly half of Kentucky’s population who are against what these legislators are voting for and what their campaigns are based on.

The authors couldn’t even get that right! The GOP controls 80%, not 75%, of the seats in the state House of Representatives; the 75% figure was from the previous House, from 2021-22, rather than the current one. With 30 seats in the state Senate, the GOP controls 79% — 78.94% to be more accurate — in that chamber. Can’t the authors do math?

But, while those numbers are pretty strong for Republicans, with the only two reliably Democratic counties in the state having just 20.94% of the Commonwealth’s population, they seem to fit the way Kentuckians vote!

Naturally, there are some Republicans in Jefferson and Fayette counties, just as there are Democrats in the rural areas, but the numbers have pretty much worked out.

While the authors gave at least a tip of the hat to more rural Kentuckians — “The rural areas focus on gun rights, ‘Family Values’ and government overreach. The issues for both sides are unique and fundamental to their respective populations” — it didn’t take them too long to list a litany of complaints blatantly tilted to the ‘progressive’ agenda. They continued:

The citizens of Kentucky are fighting for their very existence. Laws are being passed that claim to “protect” the rural population from concocted horrors, are in fact hurting and killing people in the urban population.

Killing people? What laws are being passed which kill people? We know, of course, that Miss Goldman fully supports prenatal infanticide, so it would seem that the laws she supports would actually kill people!

In very conservative Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Leader has apparently taken a full-tilt transgender advocacy stand. Long-time Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford even told us it was coming:

Alex Acquisto has written a harrowing, intimate account of some of the families in our state who are simply trying to meet their children’s needs in the wake of Senate Bill 150, which bans gender-affirming healthcare. She opens with a scene of 13-year-old Henry Svec who sat in a Frankfort hearing room as “experts” defined him as unnatural, confused and disordered. Henry and his parents are actually pretty clear about who Henry is and what he needs. They’d like to provide it to him, but the GOP majority has decided that “parents rights” means politicians get to decide what’s best for Henry.

In Opinion, we will have some first person accounts from trans people on the front lines. Rebecca Blankenship, the first trans person elected to public office in Kentucky, and some of her colleagues talk about how the trans movement is used by both the left and right for their own purposes. Ysa Leon, the incoming SGA president at Transy, always believed they would live in Kentucky and work to make it a better place, but now believes they will have to leave[1]The author claims to be transgender and uses the plural pronouns. because politicians are ginning up so much hatred. Bill Adkins, a lawyer in Williamsburg, is not trans, but he does study history and explains how political scapegoating of minorities can lead to far more deadly consequences. Former Rep. Mary Lou Marzian explains how gerrymandering has given rural legislators too much power over urban areas, which further heightens these kinds of divides.

As we have previously noted, the newspaper has fallen completely out-of-touch with its readership. Newspapers are failing all over the country, but the newspaper, which was once the dominant paper in central and eastern Kentucky, is a shadow of its former self. Where, in junior high and early high school I used to deliver the old Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader in Mt Sterling, they closed up their printing plant in seven years ago, outsourcing the print edition to a plant outside of Louisville 1½ hours west of Lexington, and dropped a separate Saturday edition at the beginning of 2020.

You want home delivery outside of Lexington? Too bad, so sad, but it ain’t going to happen!

The truthful statistic? Kentuckians as a whole are pretty conservative, and while there are some liberals and even progressives in the Bluegrass State, they are a decided minority. I can remember, back in the dark age of quill pens on parchment, University of Kentucky political science professor Malcolm Jewell telling his students that the two major party candidates are practically guaranteed 40% of the vote, and the real battle is for the 20% that’s actually up for grabs. But in the three most recent statewide general election campaigns, Democrats Joe Biden, Amy McGrath Henderson, and Charles Booker couldn’t even get the 40% Dr Jewell told us they were guaranteed.

References

References
↑1 The author claims to be transgender and uses the plural pronouns.
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‘Progressivism’ is for the wealthy

The Democratic primary for the Philadelphia mayoral nomination is over, the ‘progressive’ — a term William Teach defines as ‘nice fascist’ — candidate lost, coming in third, and the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left are trying to spin it.

The Real Lesson for Progressives in Our Philadelphia Mayoral Defeat

by Nathan J Robinson | Wednesday, May 17, 2023

In Philadelphia’s Democratic mayoral primary, Cherelle Parker has decisively defeated her opponents. Those included progressive Helen Gym, who had the backing of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The triumph of Parker, a moderate, raises the usual question about whether today’s voters are more inclined toward centrism or progressivism and why; Politico, for example, called the primary nothing less than the “next battle for the soul of the Democratic Party,” serving as “a test of the strength of the national progressive movement.”

It’s easy to portray Parker’s victory as a message sent by voters in favor of “tough on crime” policies. During her campaign, Parker had promised to put more police officers on the streets and condemned the “lawlessness” of the city. The working class Black neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by gun violence tended to support Parker.

Mr Robinson, the Editor-in-Chief of Current Affairs magazine, a very much leftist publication, seems shocked, shocked!, to find out that the victims of crime want to be protected from crime.

But city politics are always complicated, and we should be careful about stories that emphasize a single issue.

Indeed, Parker isn’t quite the equivalent of a “tough on crime” Republican, and while she’s controversially advocated “stop-and-frisk” practices, she’s also spoken of the need for “restorative justice” and endorsed reformist District Attorney Larry Krasner when he first ran for his position in 2017. Tellingly, both the local Fraternal Order of Police and the National Black Police Association endorsed one of Parker’s opponents.

Parker is also a highly experienced politician with the backing of major local power players. She received major endorsements from local labor unions. If progressives are looking for a clear takeaway from this race, “progressive candidates can’t win if major local unions aren’t supporting the progressive candidate” is just as important as anything about the politics of crime and policing. After all, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson recently won the city’s mayoral election while openly rejecting “tough on crime” politics in a city plagued by gun violence. But Johnson was a union organizer with the powerful Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). In cities where organized labor is still strong, the key lesson here might be that a progressive candidate who wants to win cannot afford to have major unions endorsing their opponent.

Uhhh, how did Mr Robinson miss that Helen Gym Flaherty had the strong endorsement of the teachers’ union in Philadelphia?

There are still some important takeaways about crime and policing. First, clearly at least some voters who are alarmed by the city’s ongoing violence found reassurance in Parker’s promises to keep people safe. Parker offered a clear and detailed public safety plan. Those progressives who don’t think “more police” is the answer to gun violence (and I count myself among them) can’t afford to let pro-police candidates be the only ones with clear policies. The slogan “Defund the Police” was ill-conceived, not because reallocating police funding is a bad idea, but because it emphasized what the progressive movement was against (harsh policing) rather than emphasizing what it was for (good schools, good jobs, good housing, healthy communities).

Oh, so Mr Robinson does support defunding the police, but simply recognizes that the slogan was “ill-conceived.” He likes the idea, but doesn’t want to be too explicit in telling the truth about it.

Progressives who want to win in areas suffering from widespread violence need a strong pro-safety message, with an emphasis that more incarceration and more safety are not synonymous.

Here’s where Mr Robinson clearly gets lost in the weeds: like Mrs Flaherty — though she carefully avoided saying it in this campaign — he supports “reallocating police funding, and he is supporting the very things Mrs Flaherty claimed to be, but the candidate was very light on the details about how she was going to pay for all of her promises.

And, quite frankly, more incarceration and more safety are synonymous: the criminal who has already been locked up for past crimes isn’t out on the streets committing more, and District Attorney Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner’s decarceration ideas, very much supported by Mrs Flaherty, left criminals out on the streets to kill other people .  .  . and Philadelphians knew that.

That Ameen Hurst, accused of murdering four people in different rampages, had escaped from jail and was on the loose on election day probably didn’t help ‘progressives.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to analyze Mrs Flaherty’s defeat as well, and actually got a lot of things right:

Progressive mayors have won elections in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Here’s why Philadelphia’s race was different.

Although Helen Gym ran to help working people, her biggest appeal was to wealthier voters in Philadelphia.

by Julia Terruso and Anna Orso | Thursday, May 18, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

National progressives were looking for another big win in Philadelphia this week, but Cherelle Parker, a moderate Democrat born and raised in the city’s Northwest section, won the historic nomination.

Progressive political celebs had lined up behind Helen Gym, hoping she might continue a wave of mayoral victories in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

“We’re taking this movement from the West Coast to the East Coast!” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told an amped-up Gym crowd at a rally on Sunday.

Ultimately, with 94% of votes counted, Gym came in third place in the Democratic mayoral primary, trailing Parker and former Controller Rebecca Rhynhart and frustrating progressives who hoped to propel gains in recent years into the city’s biggest office.

Further down:

While Gym ran to help working people — she often said she was running to change the way people live — her biggest appeal wound up being with wealthier voters in the city.

Gym won 29% of the vote in precincts where people made an average of $100,000 and more and just 11% in precincts where the average income was less than $50,000 a year, an Inquirer analysis shows.

In wealthier districts, like Center City and affluent parts of the Northwest, Gym almost certainly split votes with Rhynhart, who ran an effective campaign as a budget wonk and problem solver.

Mr Robinson had noted that Cherelle Parker Mullins won the nomination with about a third of the total vote, because the city allows a plurality to win, without a runoff election between the two top vote getters to achieve a majority. Yet he somehow failed to mention that, if Philly did have a runoff system, Mrs Flaherty, who finished third, wouldn’t be in it! Brandon Johnson, the newly elected mayor of Chicago, won the runoff election, but finished second in the initial ballot; if Chicago allowed plurality winners to win, he wouldn’t be mayor.

But the bigger part — other than the fact that Mrs Mullins is black and Mrs Flaherty is of Korean descent, in a city that voted along racial lines — is that Mrs Flaherty’s ‘progressive’ campaign claimed to be for “working people,” but much of her support came from wealthier ones. Mr Robinson, himself a millionaire, like so many other white liberals with money, just don’t seem to realize that the things they advocate don’t actually make much sense to poorer and working class people. Mrs Flaherty’s strong support of policies to attack global warming climate change can only mean greater costs for the hundreds of thousands of Philadelphia row homes which use natural gas for heating in the city’s cold and snowy winters. Advocating policies to reduce warming eighty years from now is a program for those who don’t have to worry about money, not for those who are concerned with putting food on the table tonight, or being able to pay their rent or mortgage next month.

‘Progressive’ politics are for the wealthy, for the people who just don’t have to worry about money, for people whose lives are already mostly safe and secure . . . and Philadelphia is the poorest of our nation’s ten largest cities. While all of the Democratic candidates were on the liberal side, Mrs Flaherty, herself wealthy due to her husband, was the only true ‘progressive’ in the race, and two of the Democratic candidates finished ahead of her.

References

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↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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A major loss for ‘progressives’? Philly Democrats nominate a (supposedly) tough-on-crime mayoral candidate

Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

Let me be clear here: I don’t live in Philadelphia, I don’t work in Philly, and, since July of 2017, I haven’t even lived in Pennsylvania. A victory by Helen Gym Flaherty in the Democratic primary for mayor in the city was never going to affect me personally. But a victory for ‘progressives,’ which William Teach has called ‘nice fascists,’ would have had repercussions nationwide, emboldening the dumbest people in our electorate, and that she lost makes me very, very happy.

What makes me unhappy is that the race was determined mostly by race! Former City Councilwoman Cherelle Parker Mullins won because she won the heavily black districts, and the heavily Hispanic ones, and she was the only black ‘major’ candidate; there was no serious Hispanic candidate in the race. Former City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff[1]It is interesting, and sad, that none of the major female candidates respected their husbands enough to have taken their names. won the majority white areas, but she wound up splitting that vote more evenly with Allan Domb and Mrs Flaherty. Mrs Flaherty, who is ethnically Korean, won one demographic group, which The Philadelphia Inquirer listed as “AAPI,” meaning Asian-American/Pacific Islander.

Even there, however, she took only a plurality, 41.1%, not a majority. But the notion that skin color is a determining factor doesn’t speak well for a ‘diverse’ city.

Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

The Inquirer also worked out, though taking some assumptions based on precinct populations, larger political groups, and Mrs Flaherty won a plurality, 42.7%, among ‘younger white progressive voters,’ but even there, Mrs Mullins and Mrs McDuff together outpolled her, with 45.5% of the votes. Mrs McDuff, who had been endorsed by the Inquirer, carried both ‘working class white moderate voters’ and ‘wealthy white liberal voters.’

But what really sunk the progressives?

Areas that have seen the most gun violence supported Parker the most

Chart via The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

A strong majority of residents rated crime as the top issue in pre-election polls, and the city remains in a years-long crisis of gun violence. But gun violence doesn’t affect residents equally: Some neighborhoods have far more shootings than others.The choice of those areas closest to gun violence is clear: They picked Parker.

Precincts that had seen more than 175 shooting victims within 2,000 feet of their boundaries since 2015 gave Parker half of their vote. By contrast, neighborhoods with the fewest shooting victims gave a disproportionately high share of their vote to other candidates.

Notably, Parker has espoused some tough-on-crime policies, including a willingness to revisit the policy of stop-and-frisk, citing a “crisis” of public safety.

It has been said before that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and while calling Philly voters ‘conservatives’ would certainly be wrong, it seems that the ‘progressive’ candidate saw her share of the vote steadily decline as neighborhoods were exposed to more shootings.

There is, however, a major disconnect in the City of Brotherly Love when it comes to crime. While Mrs Mullins won at least in part based on her tough-on-crime campaign, wanting to put more police officers on the streets — Mrs Flaherty had previously supported ‘defund the police’ efforts, though she kept it out of her campaign this year — rather than deploy social workers and mental health professionals as Mrs Flaherty wanted, the city also re-elected the very much soft-on-crime, police-hating defense lawyer Larry Krasner as District Attorney in 2021, the year in which Philly set its all-time record for homicides. Mr Krasner actually is fairly tough on actual murderers; it’s just that he’s not just a marshmallow, but makes marshmallows look tough when it comes to ‘lesser’ crimes. The thugs and gang-bangers — and the Inky once told us that there were no actual gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” and the newspaper’s apparent, if unpublished, stylebook has substituted “street group” for gangs — mostly get a pass, or just a slap on the wrist for illegal gun possession from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, right up until they up their crimes to rape and murder. The apparently odd notion of locking up the bad guys before they become worse guys is wholly outside the paradigm for Mr Krasner, and his voters as well. Mr Krasner being a separately elected official means that Mrs Mullins’ policy preferences don’t have any controlling authority over him.

Mr Krasner has been elected through the end of 2025, which means two full years in office after Mrs Mullins becomes mayor. Technically, she still has to win the general election against Republican David Oh, but in Philly, that’s almost a formality; the city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Harry Truman was President! How much pushback he will give to Mrs Mullins remains to be seen, but I suspect it will be a lot.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw? Mrs Mullins said that she wasn’t going to take personnel decisions during the campaign, but, as Commissioner, Miss Outlaw has been unable to prevent a steady stream of retirements and resignations, coupled with smaller new recruit numbers, and case closure numbers have dropped. For Mrs Mullins to be tough on crime, she’ll need a Police Department that can actually do the job.

References

References
↑1 It is interesting, and sad, that none of the major female candidates respected their husbands enough to have taken their names.
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“Progressive” campaign workers, both packing heat, get into a shootout in Philly Nope, they weren't evil, reich-wing Republicans.

Screen capture from OnePA website, taken at 10:20 AM EDT on May 9, 2023. Click to enlarge.

When people tell you who they are, believe them!

What does OnePA support? They support depriving property owners of their rights by opposing eviction for non-payment of rent. They are, simply put, socialists and a group opposed to law enforcement. And naturally, they support Helen Gym Flaherty!

A Philly campaign worker for a progressive political group fatally shot another canvasser in East Germantown, police say

Both men were canvassing for the city’s upcoming primary election on behalf of OnePA. Police said it was not immediately clear what sparked the shooting.

by Sean Collins Walsh, Chris Palmer, and Ellie Rushing | Monday, May 8, 2023 | 9:44 PM EDT

A 46-year-old man was fatally shot on Monday afternoon in East Germantown while canvassing for the city’s upcoming mayoral primary, police said, in an incident that stemmed from a dispute with a 22-year-old man, who was also canvassing on behalf of OnePA, a progressive-leaning political group.

It was not immediately clear what prompted the 22-year-old to shoot the older man, and police declined to identify either of them.

The tragedy on the campaign trail came one week before high-stakes mayoral and City Council elections that have been defined by debates about public-safety issues amid the city’s ongoing gun violence crisis.

OnePA Executive Director Steve Paul said members of the group were “heartbroken, and our condolences and sympathy are with their family.”

At this point in the article, an advertisement appears, something that stops a lot of readers.

“Today, a One PA team member tragically lost their life,” Paul said in a statement. “We are mourning this senseless loss and continuing to gather the facts and investigate what happened.”

Paul previously worked in the Council office of Helen Gym, who is now a mayoral candidate running in the May 16 primary with the backing of OnePA and other progressive organizations. The group is also canvassing on behalf of Council candidates Seth Oberman-Anderson, Rue Landau, Amanda McIllmurray, Isaiah Thomas, and Erika Almirón.

So, it took Inquirer reporters Sean Collins Walsh, Chris Palmer, and Ellie Rushing six paragraphs to let readers know that the canvassers were canvassing for Helen Gym Flaherty. If a reader’s only news source was the Inky — mine isn’t — wouldn’t he wonder for whom OnePA was canvassing? I sure hope his attention span was long enough to get past the first advertisement!

The 22-year-old — who was in legal possession of his handgun — remained on the scene afterward the shooting and was taken to the homicide unit to be questioned by detectives, according to Chief Inspector Scott Small. The 22-year-old’s car was also still on the street after the crime, Small said, and OnePA pamphlets could be seen in its passenger seat.

Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said the victim and the man accused of shooting him knew each other and began arguing after they “happened upon each other” on the 2000 block of Church Lane[1]At or near the intersection with Lambert Street, near the Church Lane Food Market, a bodega. around 4 p.m. Vanore was not certain what the argument was about, but said detectives were investigating the possibility that it related to an existing dispute.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, the head of the Police Department’s homicide unit, said that the two men “had always had a beef,” and that when they crossed paths on the street, the 46-year-old pulled out a gun — which was not registered to him — and the 22-year-old then pulled his firearm, shooting the older man once in the armpit.

The shooter claimed that he was acting in self-defense, but the important part to note is that both men were packing heat, one of them illegally, while canvassing, in broad daylight, for Mrs Flaherty. No wonder the guy carrying illegally was part of OnePA, ’cause he certainly seems to support the voting ‘rights’ of felons.

The candidate, of course, prefers sending “non-police mental health mobile crisis units” to reduce the city’s “gun violence” crisis, but perhaps there were no social workers in the canvassing crews.

Mrs Flaherty expressed sorrow, but made it clear that the shooter and his victim were not part of her official campaign.

In a statement issued Monday night, Gym said she was “devastated to hear about the tragic death of a canvasser today.”

“My thoughts are with the family of the victim, the One PA community, and everyone impacted by this irrevocable loss,” Gym said. “Though the canvasser was not part of our campaign, this loss is deeply felt by all of us.”

If Mrs Flaherty, who promises to “Get illegal guns off our streets,” and to “Provide interventions to stop those in the path of violence,” had anything to say about people canvassing for her carrying guns, the Inquirer never mentioned it.

References

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↑1 At or near the intersection with Lambert Street, near the Church Lane Food Market, a bodega.
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Even The Philadelphia Inquirer are calling out Helen Gym Flaherty! Serious question: if she wins the Democratic nomination, and as badly as the Editorial Board have trashed her, would they endorse Republican David Oh in November?

I will admit to being stunned, and I’m sure that columnist Will Bunch must be grinding his teeth in anger, but the Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who previously endorsed former Controller Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff for the Democratic nomination for Mayor are calling “progressive” candidate Helen Gym Flaherty to account:

Helen Gym’s plans for Philly are long on ambition, short on specifics | Editorial

Questions about how to fund billions in new spending have apparently irked Gym, but voters deserve answers.

by The Editorial Board | Tuesday, April 25, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

If elected mayor, Helen Gym has an ambitious agenda for Philadelphia. In fact, she said she wants “to change the way people live in this city.”

Gym’s long list of proposals includes guaranteed jobs for people under 30 and spending $10 billion to modernize public school buildings. But as with much of Gym’s campaign, her grandiose ideas are long on rhetoric but short on details.

When she was asked about the cost of the guaranteed jobs program, she said: “I think there are significant dollars that are currently available, but we don’t have a commitment or a plan right now.”

So, Gym’s guaranteed jobs may not be guaranteed.

None of that will matter to the ‘progressives,’ of course. The Working Families Party, which is quite frankly socialist though they don’t use the word, and which supports Mrs Flaherty, upon hearing of far-left, police-hating Brandon Johnson winning the Mayoral race in Chicago, immediately posted the tweet shown on the right, knowing that Mrs Flaherty is just as supportive of the Philadelphia Police Department as Mr Johnson is of Chicago’s.

Her answer also lacked clarity when asked how the perennially underfunded Philadelphia School District — with its $4 billion annual budget — would pay for the $10 billion for building renovations.

She told Inquirer reporter Anna Orso the city could borrow to finance some of the capital costs and steer a higher percentage of property taxes to the School District, leaving less money for other city services. A campaign spokesperson told this board that “much of the funding is not expected to require borrowing.”

So, maybe Gym will borrow the money, or maybe not.

Gym’s spokesperson added the city’s final cost depends on additional state and federal funding. In other words, how to pay for her signature education program is still to be determined.

There’s much, much more at the original, and the Editorial Board are pretty good at calling out the fact that Mrs Flaherty has been just throwing proposals on the wall, to see what will stick, to grab just another few voters into her column, without any flaming idea how to pay for all of it.

Gym should be honest about her big spending agenda before voters go to the polls on May 16. Philadelphia does not have unlimited funds. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, the city’s budget increased 50% to $6 billion with little to show for the spending spree.

The city tried to tax and spend its way to prosperity in the 1970s and ‘80s and nearly went bankrupt. Despite 25 years of fiscal sanity before Kenney was elected, Philadelphia remains one of the most heavily taxed cities in the country. The city’s tax burden continues to contribute to its slow job growth, which, in turn, is linked to its high poverty rate.

Heaven forfend! Has a Republican sneaked into the Inky’s offices and tried to say things that actually make some sense?

Then again, even the #woke inhabiting the Inquirer’s offices have to realize that the money has to come from somewhere, and that despite a series of begging letters to subscribers, the newspaper still had to make some layoffs last January. Reality bites.

The Board continued for several more paragraphs, telling readers how Mrs Flaherty is, to put it more bluntly than they did, more a bomb-thrower than a builder.

Gym is an effective hell-raiser. But Philadelphia needs a mayor who is a troubleshooter, not a troublemaker. Leading and building consensus in a diverse city doesn’t work with a bullhorn. And rule one for any big spending plans is to show your work.

But that’s the problem: so many people are so disgusted with the city, and with law enforcement — to judge by the landslide election victories of George Soros-sponsored, police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner — that a bomb thrower who makes socialist promises for which there is no reasonable way to pay stands a very good chance of winning the Democratic primary, which means, in the City of Brotherly Love, almost certainly victory in the November general election as well.

It’s a reasonable question to ask: would the Editorial Board endorse Republican David Oh in the general election if Mrs Flaherty wins the Democratic nomination?

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Helen Gym Flaherty apparently thinks that money grows on trees And she wants to do everything she can to improve public safety except the most obvious: actually enforce the law!

As Robert Stacy McCain noted in “Chicago Votes for More Crime,” when the Windy City Democrats nominated police-hating Brandon Johnson to become their next Mayor, the bad things that happened under Mayor Lori Lightfoot would just get worse.

When Jazz Shaw refers to the city’s “carjacking epidemic,” it’s no exaggeration. As recently as 2014, Chicago had barely 300 carjackings a year. Last year, there were more than 1,600 carjackings in Chicago, to go along with 737 murders and 2,937 people wounded from gunfire.

In crime-ridden Philadelphia, you’d think that people would take notice of that, and some did. Philadelphia’s Working Families Party tweeted how happy they were that Mr Johnson won in Chicago, and wanted Philly to be next by voting for Helen Gym Flaherty.

Who are the Working Families Party? On their About page, they pretty much tell us that they are full socialist without saying that they are full socialist, but I will admit to being amused that the photo they used[1]Also here, in case they delete it. as an illustration of who they are was of almost entirely young people, mostly Asian, in front of a Chinese restaurant in New York City, in the summer[2]Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops., all wearing silly face masks.

And so we come to Mrs Flaherty. The Philadelphia Inquirer, which, to their (slight) credit, endorsed Rebecca Rhynhart rather than the far-left Mrs Flaherty, had this on the Working Families’ favorite:

Philly mayoral candidate Helen Gym’s education plan includes a $10B ‘Green New Deal’ for schools

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District.

by Anna Orso | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 7;40 PM EDT

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Helen Gym on Thursday unveiled an education proposal that includes guaranteed jobs for teenagers, free SEPTA passes for all city students, and a $10 billion plan to modernize school buildings.

Gym, who stood with supporters outside Edward T. Steel Elementary School in Nicetown to make the announcement, called her public-education focused capital plan a “Green New Deal for Schools” and vowed to implement a 10-year facilities improvement plan. She also said she would add more librarians and counselors to schools, overhaul the high school selection process, and base school budgets on need, not enrollment levels.

Ahhh, yes, the Edward T Steel Elementary School. City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks, a Working Families Party member, tweeted:

I met @HelenGymPHL over a decade ago when my daughter’s school was going to be privatized. We were a few moms saying we want something greater. We DESERVE something better.

That’s what her education plan is about. That’s why I’m standing here today because since day one, she’s been fighting for communities like mine. And winning.

To this day, Edward T. Steel Elementary is a public school.

Why yes, it is. In the still public Steel Elementary, which is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 8% scored at or above that level for reading. Maybe keeping it public didn’t work all that well?

Another respondent had the charts. But perhaps having a campaign rally touting public education in front of a clearly failing public school wasn’t the brightest idea, unless Mrs Flaherty was assuming that the people who would be most likely to vote for her aren’t particularly bright themselves.

Her announcement was another sign that the former City Council member and longtime public-schools activist is running in part on her education background by proposing a laundry list of schools improvements that teachers and advocates have been urging for years. . . . .

The proposal didn’t include an overall price tag, but $10 billion in capital costs alone would represent an enormous expense. Under the current administration, the proposed capital investment for the entire city for the next six years is $13.2 billion.

My compliments to reporter Anna Orso for researching that and pointing it out. Where would the city get the money?

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District, which currently receives 55% of local property tax revenue. Doing so would, in turn, decrease cash flow to the city’s coffers.

“The point is that we’re not going to get there if all we say is what we don’t have,” she said. “I know the city has to get down to business to do it, but it needs a plan, it needs a vision, and we need somebody who’s been relentless about fighting for this from day one.”

As we have previously noted, Philadelphia’s population has dropped by 2.28% between the April 2020 Census and the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate. More, 3.34% of the 36,539 souls lost during that time period, 1,222 people, were lost to murder! If Mrs Flaherty’s proposals were put into effect, the obvious result is that more better-off people would move out of the city due to the higher taxes which would necessarily be imposed to pay for all of her ideas, whether paid for by direct taxation or in the debt service she would impose. Philly’s poverty rate, 23.1%, is double the U.S average, while the city’s median income, $49,127, is just three-quarters of the national average. Mrs Flaherty’s plans, if they push out more of the higher earners, can only exacerbate that problem, and make paying for her plans even harder.

But her plans, along with those of the Working Families Party are pretty much in line with their complete lack of understanding of economics. Perhaps they believe that money can be created out of thin air, since that’s what our federal government seems to be doing, but Philly isn’t the federal government.

The city’s teachers union, one of Gym’s biggest backers, quickly endorsed the plan Thursday, with Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan saying in a statement that Gym’s plan also prioritizes safety — including through guaranteed after-school programs — and has “thoughtful and proactive measures to address a real crisis in our city.”

Well, of course the teachers’ union endorsed Mrs Flaherty! Government employees all, they, too, have no concept of economics, and they, too, seem to think that the public trough is ever-full and never-ending. It was the teachers in Kentucky which caused former Governor Matt Bevin to lose his re-election bid, because he tried to do something really radical like reform their pension system before it went broke.

But in reading Mrs Flaherty’s website Issues page, clicking on her “Safety in every neighborhood” section, I read that she would “Declare a State of Emergency on Gun Violence,” “Protect, Uplift, and Empower Philadelphia’s Young People,” have “Community-Driven Interventions and Effective Policing,” “Reduce Violence with Clean and Green Neighborhoods”, and “Provide Real Support for Victims of Violent Crime and their Families,” spending gobs of money in these things, but never once said anything about reducing the number of vacancies in the Philadelphia Police Department, the people who actually enforce the law, the people who do their best to get criminals off the streets. Mrs Flaherty 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 ti increase public safety other than getting criminals off the streets! The Philadelphia Tribune reported:

She also vowed to overhaul the Philadelphia Police Department, “so that they are more responsive and interactive with neighbors, so that we are dealing with young people, and helping and support young people, who are currently in the path of violence right now.”

So, nothing about more police officers, just ‘progressive’ reform. Yeah, that has worked so well other places.

In addition to reverse the slashing of hours at recreation centers and public libraries, she said she wants public schools to be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., referencing the high amount of gun violence involving students that happens before 6 p.m. Gym also pledged to remove 10,000 abandoned cars from city streets and sealing 50% of the city’s vacant lots.

So, spending more money, money that the Jim Kenney Administration couldn’t find. It’s not like Mayor Kenney wanted to close libraries and recreation centers; he just didn’t have the money to do otherwise. Of course, having the recreation centers open didn’t decrease violence, and the city could open only 50 of its 65 pools because they couldn’t find enough lifeguards.

Let’s face it: there are no good candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, but there are some who are worse than others, and Helen Gym Flaherty is the worst of the worst.

References

References
↑1 Also here, in case they delete it.
↑2 Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops.
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The left say they are for democracy, but they’re really not We must do as Our Betters say, because it's for our own good!

It took a couple of Washington Post reporters to say the quiet part out loud. According to her Post biography, Lauren Weber joined newspaper in 2023 as an accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation. She previously investigated the decimated public health system and covid disparities for Kaiser Health News. Yeah, that’s the definition of an unbiased reporter! Joined by Joel Achenbach, they produced this gem:

Covid backlash hobbles public health and future pandemic response

Lawsuits and legislation have stripped public health officials of their powers in three years

By Lauren Weber and Joel Achenbach | Wednesday, March 8, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

When the next pandemic sweeps the United States, health officials in Ohio won’t be able to shutter businesses or schools, even if they become epicenters of outbreaks. Nor will they be empowered to force Ohioans who have been exposed to go into quarantine. State officials in North Dakota are barred from directing people to wear masks to slow the spread. Not even the president can force federal agencies to issue vaccination or testing mandates to thwart its march.

Conservative and libertarian forces have defanged much of the nation’s public health system through legislation and litigation as the world staggers into the fourth year of covid.

If you hold your cursor on the title tab, you’ll see that the article was originally entitled “Covid lawsuits weakened public health, U.S. pandemic preparedness.” Reporters submit their articles, but editors frequently write the headlines.

But think about what Miss Weber and Mr Achenbach wrote: that “conservative and libertarian forces” — quite the liberal bugaboo there! — used “legislation and litigation” to “(defang) much of the nation’s public health system”. Legislation is the act of legislatures, the elected representatives of the people, and litigation is the use of the courts, the legal system, to bring to account actions taken which might be outside existing law. Are not both acts of democracy in a democratic system?

At least 30 states, nearly all led by Republican legislatures, have passed laws since 2020 that limit public health authority, according to a Washington Post analysis of laws collected by Kaiser Health News and the Associated Press as well as the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University.

Health officials and governors in more than half the country are now restricted from issuing mask mandates, ordering school closures and imposing other protective measures or must seek permission from their state legislatures before renewing emergency orders, the analysis showed.

We have previously mentioned Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) dictatorial orders concerning COVID-19 restrictions, 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, and in the state House of Representatives from 61-37 (with 2 vacancies) to 75-25. Both were, and again are, veto-proof majorities under the state constitution. Republicans campaigned in 2020 on reining in the Governor’s powers, and the voters of the Commonwealth apparently approved of their message.

The subsequent legislative elections, in 2022, further increased the Republicans’ majorities, to 31-7 and 80-20. As an act of democracy in the only polls that count, actual elections, it would appear that the voters approved the Republicans’ actions in the previous legislative sessions.

Of course, our Democratic Governor was appalled that the state legislature would rein him in:

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.”

Also see: William Teach: All That Backlash To COVID Tyranny Will Make Next Pandemic Tough

As we have previously noted, the General Assembly passed the bills restricting the Governor’s emergency powers, requiring any executive orders to be approved by the legislature within thirty days or automatically lapse, which Mr Beshear vetoed, his vetoes were promptly and overwhelmingly overridden, and the Governor then went to his toady judge to file suit to overturn the legislature’s actions. It took 5½ months, but the state Supreme Court finally overruled Judge Philip Shepherd’s injunction and stated that the legislature acted within their authority.

All of that, even with the delays, was through the democratic action of a legally elected state legislature, and ruled on by legally elected judges.

That, of course, appalls Miss Weber and Mr Achenbach!

The movement to curtail public health powers successfully tapped into a populist rejection of pandemic measures following widespread anger and confusion over the government response to covid. Grass-roots-backed candidates ran for county commissions and local health boards on the platform of dismantling health departments’ authority. Republican legislators and attorneys general, religious liberty groups and the legal arms of libertarian think tanks filed lawsuits and wrote new laws modeled after legislation promoted by groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, corporate-backed influence in statehouses across the country.

I just love that paragraph! The authors note a “populist rejection of pandemic measures”, “Grass-roots-backed candidates”, “Republican legislators and attorneys general, religious liberty groups and the legal arms of libertarian think tanks”, and “groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative, corporate-backed influence in statehouses”, all examples of public opinion in democratic action.

The Alabama legislature barred businesses from requiring proof of coronavirus vaccination. In Tennessee, officials cannot close churches during a state of emergency. Florida made it illegal for schools to require coronavirus vaccinations.

We were critical, from the very beginning, of the authoritarian dictates of so many of our nation’s governors when the COVID-19 scare first erupted.

On March 19, 2020 Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) unconstitutionally ordered all churches closed in the Bluegrass State. That order covered the Easter holiday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. When a couple of churches ignored the Governor’s order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday!

Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

The result, public health experts warn, is a battered patchwork system that makes it harder for leaders to protect the country from infectious diseases that cross red and blue state borders.

Well, it will certainly make it hard for dictators to take action! In states like Kentucky, the Governor can issue executive orders, but he has to call the General Assembly into a special session — if they are not already in session — to approve the orders if they are to extend beyond thirty days. That almost sounds, you know, reasonable!

“One day we’re going to have a really bad global crisis and a pandemic far worse than covid, and we’ll look to the government to protect us, but it’ll have its hands behind its back and a blindfold on,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. “We’ll die with our rights on — we want liberty but we don’t want protection.”

There was a rather famous Virginian by the name of Patrick Henry who said something about liberty.

There’s a lot more at the Post’s original, and if you are stymied by the Post’s paywall, you can read the whole thing for free here. But what you will be reading is a thinly-veiled defense of authoritarianism, of allowing Our Betters the power to tell us what we must do and cannot do in the event of the next panicdemic.

No, that’s not a typographical error: I spelled it to indicate exactly what I thought it to be.

The cited article is not listed as an opinion piece, but the authors’ opinions are very, very obvious. That quiet part they said out loud? That we must sit down and shut up, and be ruled by the left.
______________________________________
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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It’s just so easy for the white liberals in safe neighborhoods to support ‘progressive’ politicians After all, most of the crime happens in other places

My good friend Harrison Finberg — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met him, but we can be good friends on Twitter these days — noted this tweet from Philly First Ward, the Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward. We have previously noted the mayoral candidacy of Helen Gym Flaherty,[1]Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect. one of the furthest left of the ever-growing list of hopefuls, whom The Philadelphia Inquirer described as a “longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing”. Mrs Flaherty’s campaign website is full of the usual ‘progressive’ bromides, but, at least as of this writing, there’s no actual issues page, telling the city’s voters — of which I am not one — what she would actually do, other than those bromides, in office if elected.

While she says that she will fight “gun violence,” what she doesn’t want to do is fight the criminals who use guns. I guess that’s not much of a surprise, since ‘progressives’ seem to think that guns simply levitate and shoot people all by themselves.

Helen Gym makes it official and launches a run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address gun violence

The now-former Council member and leader of the city’s progressive movement launched her run at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Center City.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Former City Councilmember Helen Gym announced Wednesday that she will run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address the city’s alarmingly high rate of gun violence, saying, “Everything is at stake right now.”

In remarks to a room of about 350 supporters gathered at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Gym centered her message on public safety, vowing to declare a state of emergency on her first day in office and prioritize improving homicide clearance rates.

I am amused that Mrs Flaherty chose a homosexual ‘Community Center’ as the place in which she announced her long-anticipated candidacy, but that’s probably something of which The Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward approves.

But while the longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing said violence is “destroying our city and our people,” she was far from taking a tough-on-crime tone.

“I will not use this crisis to roll back the clock on civil rights,” she said. “While many people in this race will talk about public safety, let me be clear: Decades of systemic racism and disinvestment brought us to this place.”

Further down:

Gym has opposed tax cuts for businesses and corporations, and has been critical of the Police Department, championing legislation to ban the use of tear gas on protesters and rejecting calls to bring back stop-and-frisk. In 2020, she voted against a planned increase to the Police Department’s budget — along with a majority of Council.

And here’s what Mrs Flaherty tweeted in 2019.

I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels, We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.

Can any policy have failed as badly as District Attorney Larry Krasner’s ‘decarceration’ program has failed the city since then? Murders get the most attention, and yes, they’re down a bit, but shootings, and every non-self-defense shooting is an attempted murder, are up.

So, who are The Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward? The First Ward is a gentrifying area, between Wharton and Mifflin Streets north and south, bounded on the west by South Broad Street and running east to the Delaware River. To the left is their group photo from their website, and with only four exceptions, they’re all as white as ceiling paint.

The area? Even a dump fixer-upper like this one is listed for sale for $475,000, though the fixed up row house at 1007 Mifflin Street is listed for $465,000.

It’s pretty typical in today’s urban areas, where the well-to-do whites who aren’t worried about street crime, who aren’t seeing the dead bodies or hearing the gunfire in their neighborhoods can blithely support ‘restorative justice‘ and ‘decarceration‘, because the bad guys who aren’t locked up aren’t in their neighborhoods.

Then again . . . .

Armed Delf-Defense in Dallas

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, February 18, 2023

This happened in December, but the police took a while to complete their investigation and make arrests, so we’re just now getting a detailed account of what happened:

There are a lot of new details about how a recent attempted carjacking of a luxury car went down in an upscale area of Dallas.

Police arrested the three suspects they were looking for, and court documents detail a good lead police had.

One suspect showed up at a hospital with a gunshot wound minutes after the attempted carjacking and shootout last December.

Police say he was shot by a friend of the Maserati owner they were trying to carjack.

Skipping the details of the crime, down to Mr McCain’s conclusion:

This attempted carjacking happened, as they say, “in an upscale area” on the north side of Dallas, which shows that there is no such thing as a “safe” neighborhood in 21st-century America. Who knows what might have happened had it not been for the fact that the Maserati owner’s friend was armed? Permit me to recommend two books by my friend Robert Waters, The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves with a Firearm and Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms.

It is unfortunate that civilization has collapsed to the point that no one is safe unless they’re carrying a pistol, but we must live in the world as it is, rather than that fantasy world where “safe” neighborhoods still exist.

The good, noble, progressive Democrats of Philadelphia’s First Ward might, just might, find the effects of the politicians and policies for which they have voted visiting their own gentrifying streets.

The feelgood story about the three ‘unsuccessful’ carjackers came from Dallas, and there’s always a better chance that Texans will be armed. The good progressive Democrats of the First Ward? The city’s Democratic politicians — and Democrats outregister Republicans in Philly about 7 to 1 — don’t want the public to carry firearms, so it might be less likely that an attempted carjacking on Wharton Street would be met with a prospective victim who was armed. Might as well give up their wheels, and hope the ‘jackers don’t go ahead and shoot you anyway.

References

References
↑1 Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect.
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Senator Karen Berg thinks that Jack can be Jill . . . and wants the public schools to enforce that

Kentucky, one of the most conservative and Republican states in the nation, elected Democrat Andy Beshear to be Governor of the Commonwealth in 2019. The previous Governor, Republican Matt Bevin, had tried to take serious action to restore the state’s employee pension fund to greater financial stability, and the teachers in the Bluegrass State went absolutely ape! Out of 1,442,390 total votes cast, then-Attorney General Beshear beat Governor Bevin by 5,189 votes, with 28,425 going to Libertarian John Hicks.

Having a Democrat as Governor has led to all kinds of mischief in Kentucky. Mr Beshear’s handling of the COVID-19 panicdemic[1]No, that’s not a typographical error; I spelled it panicdemic deliberately, because unreasoning panic is how the United States reacted to the disease. was to order churches closed — a decision eventually ruled illegal, but not until churches had been closed for nine weeks, including through Easter Sunday[2]Governor Beshear ordered the Kentucky State Police to record license plate and vehicle identification numbers of cars parked in one church parking lot on Easter Sunday, to order people who attended … Continue reading — “non-essential” businesses closed, mask mandates and the other intrusive measures. He ordered people not to have gatherings of more than ten people, from more than two households, for Thanksgiving in 2020, an order I am happy and proud to say we violated.

Another bit of horrible mischief was the appointment of other Democrats to fill executive positions in the Commonwealth, including the Commissioner of Education. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

KY education chief defends state pronoun guidance after legislators’ attacks, bills

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears and Austin Horn | Monday, February 13, 2023 | 5:13 PM EST

Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason Glass spoke out Monday in response to lawmakers’ criticism about a state guidance document recommending the use of a student’s preferred pronouns and legislation that seeks to strengthen “parental rights” in schools.

In a Monday email to state education employees, Glass referenced his comments last week to the House Education Committee, where he was testifying about long-standing shortages in the educator workforce.

“While I was happy to share information with them about the shortages we are facing and trend lines in the teacher workforce,” Glass said, “I was disappointed with the turn the meeting took toward the end of the time I was there. Instead of staying focused on what we can do to support the teaching profession, some of the legislators ended up focusing on guidance the agency produced regarding use of student’s preferred names.”

At the meeting, lawmakers openly criticized Glass and the guidance, calling it part of a “woke agenda” driven by Glass.

The guidance says, in part, school leaders should consult with their local board counsel for advice on specific issues in their districts. It is considered best practice to recognize and use a student’s preferred name and pronouns when these preferences are requested, the document said.

If a student voluntarily discloses their sexual orientation or gender identity to an educator with the assumption that this information is to be kept private, it is best practice for the educator to maintain that confidence and keep the information confidential, the document recommends.

There’s more at the original. While what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal has a paywall, non-subscribers can access a couple of free articles a month.

As we have previously noted, the Central Bucks (Pennsylvania) School Board required teachers, administrators and staff to use students’ proper names, references and pronouns as recorded in school records, unless the individual student’s parents approved a change. This was done to avoid legal repercussions if a particular student wanted to claim he was the opposite sex, and his parents sued the school for ‘enabling’ gender transition. By setting up a system under which parents can ‘opt in’ to allowing their ‘transgendered’ students to be identified by their ‘preferred’ names and pronouns, the District is also setting up a policy which allows parents to choose not to go along with that silliness, and thus protect the District from being sued into penury.

While no such lawsuit has been filed in the Bluegrass State thus far, that doesn’t mean one couldn’t happen if teachers follow the Commissioner of Education’s ‘guidance’. Quite frankly, I hope that such does happen, sooner rather than later. More, I want to see not just the school systems sued for this, but the school administrators, staff, and teachers who go along with such nonsense.

Of course, the newspaper, which as we have previously reported makes endorsements uniformly rejected by voters in the sixth congressional district and the state as a whole, is very much on the side of the homosexual and ‘transgender’ lobby:

Sen. Berg: Please listen to a grieving mother. ‘Parents rights’ bills are dangerous. | Opinion

by state Senator Karen Berg (D-26th District) | Friday, February 10, 2023

I have been proud to represent the people of Kentucky and fight for their rights and well-being since being first elected in 2020. However, this proud moment was marred by a deep personal loss — my transgender son, Henry, who I loved with all my heart, took his own life. This tragedy has forced me to confront the harsh reality where discrimination and bigotry against the LGBTQ+ community are all too common.

We have previously noted Senator Berg, who is actually a physician, a diagnostic radiologist, who should understand the very elementary biology of sex differences, and her acceptance of her daughter’s transgenderism. While all of the sources I could find give only Miss Berg-Brousseau’s first name as “Henry,” and use the masculine pronouns and references to her, at The First Street Journal, we always tell the truth: Miss Berg-Brousseau was female, regardless of what she and her mother wanted to believe. The Herald-Leader uncritically wrote that Senator Berg’s daughter was her son. As is so often the case, the newspaper’s stylebook calls for referring to the ‘transgendered’ by the gender they claim to be, not the sex they actually are, and the use of the preferred ‘pronouns’ and faux name they chose. All of this is subtly designed to be courtesy, but also to normalize ‘transgenderism’ as something real.

Now, bills like Senate Bill 150 are being introduced in our state legislature and sold as “parental choice,” but in reality, they are nothing more than a dangerous attack on our children. These bills aim to limit the authority of the Kentucky Board of Education and the Kentucky Department of Education concerning parental rights and a student’s use of pronouns, prohibit school policies from keeping student information confidential from parents, and even require school personnel and students to use pronouns for students that do not conform to that student’s biological sex.

Perhaps Dr Berg isn’t that good a doctor, because she just referred to a ‘transgendered’ student’s ‘gender identity’ as his “biological sex.”

These measures are not just misguided. They are cruel and harmful. Bills like SB 150 send a message to LGBTQ+ students that they are not valued or respected and put them at greater risk of discrimination and harm, whether self-harm or bullying. They also undermine the ability of teachers and school staff to create safe and inclusive environments for all students, and they limit the ability of schools to provide the support and resources that our children need to thrive.

Senator Berg could, if she chose, try to amend SB 150 to allow, as the Central Bucks policy does, schools to refer to ‘transgendered’ students by their preferred names, pronouns and other gendered references if the student’s parents were notified and consented. But that isn’t what she wants; she wants the public schools — which, due to compulsory education laws, have what is, in effect, a captive audience — to keep a student’s ‘transgender identity’ a secret from the parents. While it’s difficult to imagine that parents could fail to notice these things, or that the gossip of neighborhood parents and other students would escape the parents’ notice, Senator Berg does not want them notified.

Of course, Dr Berg wants ‘transgenderism’ normalized as well:

The provision in SB 150 to establish requirements for public schools’ courses, curriculums, or programs on human sexuality is particularly concerning. These courses and curriculums should provide accurate and comprehensive information on human sexuality and gender identity in a way that is inclusive and respectful of all students. Requiring a specific perspective on these subjects limits educational opportunities and spreads harmful, inaccurate information about the LGBTQ+ community.

Actually, the public schools should not be presenting programs on human sexuality at all; that is the job of parents. But any curriculum on human sexuality is going to have a “specific perspective,” either normalizing and accepting what the federal government has euphemistically referred to as “minority sexual orientations,” or not doing so, which the homosexual and ‘transgender’ advocates would find terrible. Dr Berg is pushing a specific agenda. Dr Berg is wanting the public schools in Kentucky to push the acceptance of a transgender student as being the sex he claims to be rather than the sex he is; she wants the schools to push the notion that Jack is really Jill — or vice versa — with the schools enforcing the chosen names, pronouns, and other gendered references the ‘transgendered’ prefer, regardless of the beliefs of other students and other students’ families.

It isn’t much of a step to see another student referring to Jack as Jack rather than Jill being punished for bullying for not accepting the notion that Jack is really Jill.

In her OpEd piece, Dr Berg mentioned nothing about her daughter’s mental illness, I suppose because it would undermine the political goal she is trying to achieve. But it’s not a secret, as even Dr Berg previously admitted:

This lack of acceptance took a toll on Henry. He long struggled with mental illness, not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance.

Henry Berg-Brousseau is seen with his politician mother Karen, father Bob, a marketing director, and sister Rachael, a rabbi. Photo from the Daily Mail. Click to enlarge.

To be blunt about it, young Miss Berg-Brousseau would have found ‘acceptance’ difficult even if people around her accepted her claim to be a boy. A photo of the family shows Miss Berg-Brousseau as being shorter than her mother and sister, as well as obese. Were she an actual boy who grew up that way, “he’d” have been the last picked for a team in Phys Ed, and been dateless as high school girls, real girls, would have rejected “him” for more masculine guys. As an adult, she might somehow ‘pass’ as a male, if no one asked any questions, but she’d have been the least impressive of ‘guys’. A female claiming to be male does not change the sexual dimorphism which exists in human beings, and Miss Berg-Brousseau grew up with a height much more typical of females than males.

You know, I get it: Dr Berg really, really, really wants to believe that her daughter was actually her son, and she wants her daughter to be honored for what she claimed to be. She is suffering the personal tragedy of having lost her child, and that is a devastating thing, but it doesn’t make her right.

More, I understand that some people think that it’s just common courtesy to accept the ‘transgendered’ as who and what they claim to be, rather than what they actually are. But people have a right to think for themselves, and if they do not want to agree that Jack is really Jill, they have that right, and the public schools should not be enforcing a perception that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. The ‘transgendered’ need mental help, to help them to come to terms with what they are, not coddling to continue their delusions of what they think they should be.

References

References
↑1 No, that’s not a typographical error; I spelled it panicdemic deliberately, because unreasoning panic is how the United States reacted to the disease.
↑2 Governor Beshear ordered the Kentucky State Police to record license plate and vehicle identification numbers of cars parked in one church parking lot on Easter Sunday, to order people who attended services into self-quarantine.