Category Archives: Freedom of Speech and of the Press

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No matter how low you bow, you cannot bow low enough for the left!

We have often mocked what I have sometimes referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. for its journolism[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading and wholly #woke[3]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 kowtowing to the left, but it doesn’t matter: no matter how low you bow and scrape, you just can’t bow low enough or rend your garments and gnash your teeth in anguish enough to satisfy the left.

Philadelphia Watchdog Coalition Gives Philadelphia Inquirer Vote of ‘No Confidence’

by Tauhid Chappell | Tuesday, May 30, 2023

The “Buildings Matter, Too” headline was published June 2, 2020 on page A12 of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Click to enlarge.

Free Press joins its allies within the Journalism Accountability Watchdog Network (J.A.W.N.) in giving a vote of “no confidence” to The Philadelphia Inquirer after the city’s paper of record failed to address numerous issues around diversity, equity, inclusion and coverage of Philly’s diverse communities.The letter, signed by Free Press Program Manager Tauhid Chappell and the presidents of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (PABJ), the Asian American Journalism Association’s Philadelphia chapter (AAJA-P) and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Philadelphia chapter (NAHJ-P), comes at a time when J.A.W.N. has been working to hold Philadelphia news outlets accountable for their treatment of both journalists of color and communities of color.

Much of this work has centered on pushing The Philadelphia Inquirer to dismantle the structural racism that has long defined the organization. In 2020 — following the mass uprisings responding to the murder of George Floyd — the paper published an article with the callous headline “Buildings Matter Too.” In the wake of the public backlash, the Inquirer claimed that it wanted to become an antiracist institution. But the paper has failed to make the necessary shifts.

Earlier this month, organizers of J.A.W.N met with Inquirer Publisher and CEO Lisa Hughes and Inquirer board member Keith Leaphart to discuss several DEI concerns and commitments that the paper has neglected to address with our organizations following the “Buildings Matter Too” fiasco.

Then Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski, a twenty year veteran if the Inquirer, wrote a catchy headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” playing off the #BlackLivesMatter meme, and he was fired resigned over it.

Philadelphia was torn by riots following the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled previously convicted violent felon George Floyd in Minneapolis. Just a month ago, the Inky bowed low to the rioters, describing a riot-burned-out area as:

The site’s previous buildings — housing a McDonald’s restaurant, a Vans shoe store, and a Dr. Martens shoe store — were ransacked and set ablaze on the night of May 30, 2020, following a day of somber demonstrations condemning the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“(F)ollowing a day of somber demonstrations”? Is that like “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests”?

Over the course of two years, Hughes and Inquirer leadership refused to meet with J.A.W.N. as a collective to address the ongoing failure of the Inquirer’s DEI initiatives. Hughes even went so far as to send an email to Inquirer staff warning of “voices outside of our organization looking to downplay and disregard the hard work that goes on each and every day at The Inquirer” — describing the complaints from J.A.W.N. as “demands, threats, and belittlement.”

These failures have prompted multiple journalists of color to leave the newsroom, which until recently employed zero Black male reporters outside of its sports desk. There continues to be public distrust of the Inquirer‘s coverage of police, gun violence and public safety. There is also a lack of accessible opportunities for the public to hold the Inquirer accountable over its failures to take the steps needed to become an “antiracist” newsroom. We came to this meeting hoping to have an honest conversation where the Inquirer would acknowledge the harm it has inflicted.

There most certainly is an accessible opportunity for the public to hold the newspaper accountable, and it is being held accountable in just that way: people can stop buying the newspaper. The circulation figures I could find for the Inky show that the newspaper is just a fifth of the size it was thirty years ago.

Of course, for the people at Free Press, who actually want “reparations” from media organizations, that really won’t work, because the Inquirer just doesn’t have that many ‘readers of color’ in the city.  With a newsstand price of $2.95 for a weekday issue, assuming you can find a newsstand selling it, a lot of people who might otherwise have picked up a copy no longer will. For black readers in the city, the Philadelphia Tribune, which concentrates on the black community, is a lot less expensive, at $1.25 a copy at the newsstand.

However, there’s a significant problem for readers of the Inquirer: a lot of them really can’t read! But, if they can read, the Inky is running a subscription special! Just click on the image.

These low literacy and retention rates have wide-ranging consequences. Philadelphia ranks 92nd out of the 100 largest U.S. cities in educational attainment. 17.4% of adult Philadelphians—an estimated 225,000—do not have a high school diploma, compared to 10.5 percent in Pennsylvania at large, and only 28% of Philadelphians 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher, ahead of only Cleveland and Detroit, and 6% behind the national average.

The literacy crisis in Philadelphia’s public schools produces adults who struggle to read. Philadelphia ranks at the bottom among large American cities in reading proficiency; according to recent federal data, roughly 22 percent of Philadelphians aged 16 and older lack the most basic literacy skills. 52% of Philadelphia’s adults are functionally illiterate, and 67% are low-literate, reading at a sixth- to eighth-grade level. Almost 40% of adult Philadelphians struggle to fill out a job application, to read doctors’ instructions on their medicines, and to help with their children’s homework.

That’s the #woke left for you! We have already noted how ‘progressive’ Helen Gym Flaherty ran, unsuccessfully, for the Democratic mayoral nomination, touting the strong support of the teachers’ union, and bragged about how she saved Edward T Steel Elementary School from ‘going charter.’ The school, still public, is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, with 1% of students which scored at or above the proficient level for their grade in math, and 8% scored at or above that level in reading.

Unfortunately, the meeting left J.A.W.N. members feeling that the Inquirer has no intention in working in partnership with the coalition in meaningful and transformative ways. Hughes and Leaphart refused to acknowledge concerns raised by our respective memberships (which include past and current journalists of color at the paper). And the two showed no interest in honoring the formal agreements it had made with PABJ and Free Press. “Let the past stay in the past,” Hughes and Leaphart repeatedly said.

As a result, the Journalism Accountability Watchdog Network has decided to give a vote of “no confidence” in the Inquirer leadership, asserting that the paper does not have a genuine interest in reaching shared grounds to address ongoing DEI concerns that J.A.W.N., and members of the public, have consistently raised over the years. Given this collective vote of “no confidence,” in good conscience J.A.W.N. cannot recommend that anyone seek out opportunities at the Inquirer. This includes fellowship, internship, apprenticeship or hiring initiatives, especially since the company has failed to partner with J.A.W.N. on such initiatives in the past.

So, the Free Press and JAWN complain that the Inky has not hired enough ‘journalists of color,’ yet they also recommend against potential ‘journalists of color’ seeking employment at the newspaper. `

With the conclusion of all of this, Free Press looks forward to working with more community groups and other like-minded organizations in Philly that truly value community engagement, centering community-information needs and producing sound journalism that accurately reflects the city’s diversity.

What, exactly, does the ‘Free Press’ want in journalism from the Inquirer, when it comes to “producing sound journalism that accurately reflects the city’s diversity”? The problem is that the vast majority of the violent crime, shootings, and homicides occurs in the city’s heavily black neighborhoods, and the newspaper does what it can to soft-peddle that fact. As much as Published Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes and Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar would like it to be different, if the paper accurately reported the news from Strawberry Mansion and North Philadelphia, it would be reporting much more heavily on the crime and violence in those areas.

By now, Miss Hughes and Mr Escobar ought to have learned the truth: there’s nothing that they could do short of firing every white employee, giving all of their jobs to ‘people of color,’ resigning themselves, and leaving to the people the wokesters would designate millions of dollars in ‘reparations’ that would satisfy the left, and even there, I’m not certain it would be enough.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑3 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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Oops! Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella might be about to get called on the carpet!

It looks like Philadelphia Inquirer suburban reporter Vinny Vella is going to get called onto the carpet in Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar’s office: he referred to “gang” rather than “street group”! Then again, it wasn’t his first offense.

A group of Philly teens stole nearly 20 guns from a Bucks County gun shop, according to police

LugarMan Inc., in Langhorne, was burglarized at about 3 a.m. Tuesday, police said. The suspects were arrested in Trenton after a long chase through the suburbs.

by Vinny Vella | Tuesday, May 30, 2023 | 1:20 PM EDT

A group of Philadelphia teens burglarized a Bucks County gun store early Tuesday, according to police. The incident, which ended with three young people in custody, is the latest in a series of similar heists targeting gun stores in Bucks and Montgomery Counties.

This is a major pet peeve of mine! People have used “burglarize” so much that it’s now in the dictionary, but any educated person, especially a writer, should use the original word, burgle.

A motion-sensor alarm at LugerMan Inc. in Langhorne notified police in Middletown Township at around 3 a.m., Detective Lt. Steve Forman said. When officers arrived, they saw a car pulling out of the store’s lot and followed it.

The Middletown Township officers continued to chase the vehicle as it sped away from the store, Forman said. Officers from nearby Falls Township assisted, throwing down a spike strip that struck the car’s tires but didn’t end the pursuit.

The teens continued to Morrisville and then over the Calhoun Street Bridge to Trenton, where they lost control of the car and crashed without injury, according to Forman. Trenton Police helped arrest three teens, who haven’t been identified and remain in custody in the New Jersey city as they await extradition to Bucks County.

Mr Vella reported that all of the stolen firearms were recovered.

I just had to go ahead and take the screen capture, to document what was there before it got edited away.

Naturally, I don’t have access to any formal statement of the Inquirer’s stylebook, so perhaps the word “gang” actually is permitted, and only reporters Ellie Rushing, Jessica Griffin, Ximena Conde, and Chris Palmer, who wrote:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

actually persist in the “street group” nonsense, something that I have previously mocked.

The best part of Mr Vella’s story? The fact that the burglaries occurred in Bucks County, and not in Philadelphia, so the soft-on-crime, police-hating defense mouthpiece who is now Philly’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, won’t have the authority to let the alleged burglars and thieves off with the lightest of slaps on the wrist. These “teens” need to be charged as adults if possible, tried, convicted, and locked up for as long as the law allows.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us about its impending death.

Yes, I subscribe to The Philadelphia Inquirer, to keep up with the news from the state in which I lived for fifteen years, and the news from the City of Brotherly Love, and yes, I have often mocked the paper by calling it The Philadelphia Enquirer, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it sometimes can be. RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but it seems apt enough that I often use it. And thus I was wryly amused by this story:

At Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, the last newsstand stopped selling newspapers

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

by Mike Newall | Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

The handwritten sign hung on the door of the newsstand at 30th Street Station. It offered one final headline from a shop that will carry no more.

“No newspapers,” it read, underlined four times for emphasis.

That’s because earlier this month Faber, the New Jersey-based newsstand and bookseller, stopped selling newspapers at its 30th Street location. The store’s shelves remain stocked with magazines, periodicals, books, snacks, greeting cards, and travel trinkets. But the iconic station’s sole newsagent is now a newsstand without newspapers.

The explanation, sadly, is old news. Nearly no one was buying them.

One would think that this story would truly alarm Publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar, and the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism, which owns the newspaper. If no one is buying the newspaper, that means that no one wants the newspaper, at least not enough to pay the newsstand price of $2.95.

Slumping sales would hardly come as a surprise. Not in the Age of Smartphones. Not when the pandemic only worsened the newspaper industry’s existential struggle to survive its digital transformation. And not as newsstands themselves, like coin-operated news boxes before them, slowly disappear.

But newspaper sales had grown beyond bleak at 30th Street Station, Carr said. Each year an estimated four million passengers pass through the station’s soaring concourse, making it Amtrak’s third busiest hub. Meanwhile, in recent times, the stand rarely sold more than a dozen daily papers each day, Carr said. (And mostly out-of-town publications. Ouch.) Then there’s rising prices, delivery costs, and time and energy spent bundling up returns.

I’m actually a special case. Due at least in part to my poor hearing, getting the news via television or radio isn’t effective for me. More, when I read the news, if there’s something which sounds strange or inconsistent, I can go back are reread the part that confused me. More, using printed material for my poor site, I like using a more comprehensive and consistent site; newspapers have the ability to go more into depth than the broadcast/cablecast media. Finally, I delivered newspapers when I was in junior high and high schools. They are, for me, a medium I appreciate and like.

But if newspapers, which actually are just updated 18th century technology, want to survive somehow, they have to produce a product that people actually want to not just read, but actually buy. National news we can get for free, even if in print form, from CNN or Fox or the new News Nation, which claims to be unbiased. I’m paying for the Inky because I’m looking for Philly and Pennsylvania news, and if the Inky can’t provide that, in a form that people will buy, in the end, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper will be history.

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In trying to avoid calling street gangs gangs, The Philadelphia Inquirer has again beclowned itself

We have expended some bandwidth mocking The Philadelphia Inquirer for its statement that there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love:

In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.

We also mocked the George Soros-sponsored defense mouthpiece who is now the city’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, when his office decided to refer to them as rival street groups. And we pointed out, at the end of last year, that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. was still using euphemisms to refer to gangs those cliques of young men, though the word “gang” in one article, apparently for prosaic reasons, since the term “street group” had been used previously in the same sentence.

Since then, we have noted the newspaper’s adoption of the term “street groups.”

And now? The Enquirer Inquirer is taking a silly effort to justify it!

North Philadelphia street group ‘BNG’ members have been charged in multiple shootings

Prosecutors say four men committed a string of shootings in 2021 that left two people dead and five others injured.

by Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, May 23, 2023

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday announced charges against four young men affiliated with a North Philadelphia street group that investigators say committed a string of shootings in 2021 that left two people dead and five others injured.

Following a more than year-long investigation, prosecutors charged four men they say are affiliated with the group “BNG” or “Big Naddy Gang” — named after a 15-year-old boy known as “Naddy” who was fatally shot in April 2021.

So, the “street group” members call themselves a “gang,” but the Inky can’t? 🙂

After the teen was killed, prosecutors said, his friends — seeking retaliation and local notoriety — formed BNG and committed at least five shootings in the next six months, chronicling the violence along the way on social media, in rap songs, and in texts to one another.

District Attorney Larry Krasner said Tuesday that the young men wrote in one text that they “put the ‘h’ in homicide.”

“Today, we’re going to put the ‘j’ in jail,” the DA said.

One does wonder whether Mr Krasner had the opportunity to put the ‘j’ in jail for the accused previously, but declined to do so.

Mugshots via 6ABC News, because the Inquirer would never publish them.

The story went on to describe the crimes allegedly committed by the members of the gang, Dontae Sutton, then 17, Jamir Brunson-Gans, 18 at the time, Elijah Soto, then 16, and Khalil Henry, then 17.

Brunson-Gans and Soto have each been charged with murder, attempted murder, and related crimes.

Henry has been charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder, and related offenses.

Sutton has been charged with murder, four counts of attempted murder, and many additional crimes.

Since three of the four were under 18 at the times of their alleged offenses, the obvious question becomes: will Mr Krasner charge them as adults, or juveniles? Mr Soto has already had that break previously:

Soto was arrested in January 2022 and charged with conspiracy and simple assault after court records say he and three others attacked, kicked, and stabbed a juvenile. A court spokesperson said the adult charges against Soto were withdrawn and the case was transferred to juvenile court.

Here’s where the Inky gets funny:

This is the third sprawling indictment of a Philadelphia street group in just the last six months, as the District Attorney’s Office, in partnership with local and federal police, try to crack down on the numerous street groups across Philadelphia.

Those groups — which prosecutors call gangs, a label sometimes contested by community members given the groups’ small size and fluid structure and membership — are often made up of a small group of friends, mostly young men, largely from the same neighborhood. Many are involved in the drill rap scene, and their music and social media posts often chronicle — and fuel — shootings, authorities say.

So, even the District Attorney calls them gangs now, but The Philadelphia Inquirer will not? One wonders: what is the minimum size at which a “street group” becomes a “gang” as far as the Inky is concerned? Maybe when they call themselves Bloods or Crips?

At what point do the editors and the publisher of the Inquirer realize just how foolish they look? Everyone reading the Inky’s stories knows that they mean “gang” when they write “street group,” so it isn’t as though the newspaper is somehow fooling anybody.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
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The left just don’t understand economics If liberals really understood economics, they wouldn't be liberals anymore

The American left just love to argue that certain things are “basic human rights.” Not things like our freedom of speech or religion, things which the Constitution of the United States recognizes as something we have as part of ourselves, but things which the left believe that other people should be required to provide for us.

In an episode of Blue Bloods, fictitious New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan said that the freedom of the press applies to those who own one. I’ve been on this world for seventy years now, and I do not recall anyone ever saying that if I did not own a printing press, that my constitutional right to freedom of the press meant that someone — meaning: the government — should somehow be required to provide one for me, or that The New York Times or National Review were somehow obligated to provide publication space for me. My constitutional right to keep and bear arms has never been held to mean that the government should be required to furnish a 30.06 for me to defend my farm from the critters in the neighboring Daniel Boone National Forest.

This internet thingy that Al Gore invented has provided millions more Americans with a new form of the press and has been a blessing, but yeah, I still have to pay for the internet service to use it, and the web hosting for The First Street Journal. While I have also been invited to publish on the American Free News Network, and do not pay for that, other private individuals are paying for it, of their own free choice. Given the conservative nature of AFNN, I’m pretty sure that the left wouldn’t believe that the taxpayers should have to subsidize its publication!

But they sure love declaring other things as “basic human rights,” for which other people have to pay!

Water is a basic human right. So why is Philly resuming shutoffs May 24?

The amount of money collected by shutting off service to customers who can’t afford to pay is a drop in the bucket compared to the incredible damage that shutoffs cause.

by Christina A. Roberto, Laura A. Gibson, and Robert W. Ballenger, For The Inquirer | Tuesday, May 16, 2023 | 6:00 AM EDT

During the chemical spill last March that imperiled the city’s biggest water treatment plant, nearly one million Philadelphians feared losing access to safe drinking water. Most residents are not used to living with such a threat. But many of our fellow Philadelphians will experience that fear and uncertainty every year — not because of contamination, but because of poverty.

Water security — the ability to reliably access safe water — is recognized by the Pennsylvania Constitution as a basic human right, yet tens of thousands of Philly residents have their water turned off every year because they are unable to pay their bills.

So, what does the state Constitution actually say about this? From the link provided by the authors:

The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic, and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

So, it states that it is the responsibility of the Commonwealth to insure that the air, water, and land resources should be kept clean; it does not say that it is the duty of the Commonwealth to provide water being pumped into everyone’s homes.

Imagine if it did. That would require the state of Pennsylvania to provide the plumbing infrastructure to every mountainside home in the most remote and rural parts of the state.

We understand that the city needs to collect money from residents to maintain its water infrastructure. But the amount of money collected by shutting off service to customers who can’t afford to pay is a drop in the bucket compared to the incredible damage that shutoffs cause.

Without running water, people can’t wash their hands or their dishes, or prepare their food. They have limited use of toilets and bathing. Something as critical as a baby’s infant formula becomes highly stressful to prepare. What’s worse, water shutoffs can destroy families — unaffordable utility bills and utility service terminations are the most common housing issues requiring children to be placed in foster care. As debt accumulates from water shutoffs, it can lead to financial ruin and a downward spiral to homelessness.

Do the authors really recognize what they say they do? From their brief bios at the end of the OpEd piece, we can see that they are all ‘elites,’ professors at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, and an attorney, and people who earn plenty of money.

More, their argument that “unaffordable utility bills and utility service terminations are the most common housing issues requiring children to be placed in foster care” isn’t something which would be confined to water service; the same would apply to natural gas service, which many Philadelphians, especially in older homes and rowhouse neighborhoods use for heat and cooking, and electricity, which is also used for heating and cooking. More, most non-electric heating systems — natural gas or heating oil — also require electricity for activation and some for pumps.

The Water Department is seeking approval to increase the typical residential customer’s bill by about 21% over a two-year period. Without access to assistance, this proposed increase will place more families at risk for shutoffs.

So, someone has to pay for water service, right? Even the authors recognize that, yet if service terminations for non-payment were to be ended, as they advocate, then those people who can and do pay their water bills will have to pay more, because water service costs money to maintain and operate. Perhaps that doesn’t mean that much to Ivy League professors and an attorney who is also an alumnus of that private school, with estimated annual costs of $89,028 per year for undergrads, or a mere $73,494 if a local resident who can live with their parents, but a lot of working Philadelphians are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and while the 21% increase certainly reflects the inflation this country has suffered under the Biden Administration, those bills would have to go up even more if some people were, in effect, granted water service without having to pay for it.

Water shutoffs for debt collection are set to resume on May 24, posing a serious threat. Based on data from the Water Department, we estimate tens of thousands of Philadelphians lost water in a typical year before COVID-19.

Translation: the city, which also prohibited other utility service shutoffs and evictions for non-payment during the three years of the panicdemic — not a typo; panic is absolutely the proper word to apply to the country’s response — had thousands upon thousands of Philadelphians living without paying for their housing and utilities. And that raises the obvious question: if utility shutoffs for non-payment are banned, as the authors want, why would those who could pay their water bills do so?

That these shutoffs will occur during the city’s ever-hotter summers is a recipe for disaster. A healthy adult would struggle during a 90 or 100-plus-degree day with no drinking water. Imagine how it will affect children, older residents, and the seriously ill. The city’s poor neighborhoods without trees can be 15 to 20 degrees warmer than leafy areas in Chestnut Hill. Do we really want to inflict this kind of suffering on our most vulnerable citizens?

And there you have it: “Do we really want to inflict this kind of suffering on our most vulnerable citizens?” In the original on The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, that’s repeated as a ‘pullquote,’ roughly six inches across and two inches wide. But as someone who grew up in the South, who was graduated from a 1937 WPA/CCC high school without air conditioning, and who has lived more than half of my life in places without AC, I recognize that hot weather is simply a part of life, and if uncomfortable, is still part of the environment. We noted, just yesterday, that several of the city’s public swimming pools will not be opened this year as well, because, in one of our nation’s most heavily taxed cities, there simply isn’t the money to repair and open them all.

This is the part that so many on the left just don’t understand: everything costs money, and for one person to receive something he did not make himself for free, someone else has to pay for it.
__________________________________
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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Helping without helping

I guess that I was wrong . . . sort of.

I had said, on Twitter, that The Philadelphia Inquirer would not publish the photos of two escaped criminals, one of whom was accused of murder, even though the other media in the City of Brotherly Love did. After all, publishing their mugshots might help in apprehending them, and, of course, since the suspects are both black, publishing their photos would be raaaacist. Much of the professional media in the city have criticized Fox29’s Steve Keeley for his crime coverage, for that very reason. Cherri Gregg of WHYY, the Philadelphia affiliate of National Public Radio, wrote:

I rarely speak badly of news outlets — BUT Steve Keeley FOX 29’s coverage of crime — definitely makes me cringe. Crime coverage can be very harmful and scares people.

I have been working with my fellow Board Members at Law & Justice Journalism Project to train journalists to do better. Our crime coverage must be community centered — otherwise it can be harmful, sensationalized and disproportionate to what is really happening. AND who gets harmed?? Black and brown people… Black communities and Black men.

Shockingly enough, the Inquirer did cover the story, and I am amused:

Two men, including one charged with 4 murders, escaped from a Philly jail, police say

The escape happened around 8 p.m. Sunday night but was not made public until Monday evening.

by Samantha Melamed | Monday, May 8, 2023 | 8:48 PM EDT

Two men escaped from the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center on Sunday at 8:30 p.m., but their absence was not noticed until Monday afternoon, Prisons Commissioner Blanche Carney said at a news conference Monday evening.

One, Ameen Hurst, 18, was charged with four homicides, including the killing of Rodney Hargrove, who had just been released from a Philadelphia jail when he was gunned down on prison grounds in 2021.

The other, 24-year-old Nasir Grant, faces drug and gun charges.

“The goal right now is to make sure these two individuals are apprehended and brought back into custody,” Carney said, adding that both U.S. Marshals and the Philadelphia Police have joined that effort.

Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore of the Philadelphia Police Department described Hurst as “a very dangerous individual,” and said, “We are looking for the public’s help to get him back.”

I’m sorry, but this is just rolling on the floor funny. The jail, the Philadelphia Police, and U.S. Marshalls are all seeking these suspects, one of whom is described as extremely dangerous, and the “anti-racist news organization” that the Inquirer promised to be published a picture which showed enough to the suspects for readers to tell that they are both black, but not detailed enough to help readers really identify them if they passed them on the streets.

You can click on the screen captured image I took from the Inky’s article to enlarge it, but even full-sized, the photos won’t really help. At least as of the writing of this article, at 8:53 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 9th, the newspaper has not included photos large enough to readers to be able to identify the escapees.

The escape occurred less than a week after the correctional officers’ union, Local 159 of AFSCME District Council 33, entered a vote of no confidence in Carney’s leadership. They said she had failed to adequately respond to a staffing crisis that has risen to more than 800 vacancies, or 40% short of a full complement.

The prisons have been subject to a monitor appointed by a federal judge since last year, in response to a class-action lawsuit alleging inhumane and unconstitutional prison conditions.

I’ll admit it: I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be a prison guard. But, when I consider that the city’s Police Department is over 500 officers understaffed, and non-uniformed city staffing is also under authorized strength, perhaps, just perhaps, it’s time to entartain the possibility that the City of Philadelphia is a crappy place to work, period.

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Hold them accountable! The good old boys’ network strikes again

I have frequently called out The Philadelphia Inquirer for poor reporting, so it is only fair when I note when they do good journalism.

The quiet handling of rape allegations at two Philly health institutions

How Jefferson and Rothman dealt with an alleged sexual assault involving an orthopedic surgeon and a medical resident.

by Wendy Ruderman | Monday, May 8, 2023

It was almost midnight and Jessica Phillips, a doctor training in orthopedic surgery, was one of the few guests remaining at a pool party that surgeon John Abraham hosted each summer for Thomas Jefferson University medical residents at his nine-bedroom Main Line home.

Phillips sat in an Adirondack-style chair by a stone fire pit with Abraham, a (Thomas) Jefferson (University) professor and division chief at the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, a private practice whose physicians work at the university’s hospitals.

The band had packed up, and caterers had cleared the wine glasses and plates smeared with cocktail sauce. Abraham handed her a lit Cuban cigar. She later remembered being so drunk she dropped it on her pants.

The medical resident remembered little else afterward. In flashes, while in and out of consciousness, she recalled Abraham on top of her on the ornate rug in his library. She awoke in his bedroom naked and bruised, she later told multiple investigators.

In Abraham’s recollection, Phillips pulled him on top of her on the library floor, court records show, while his judgment was impaired by alcohol. Nonetheless, in a text message sent to his boss after the party, Abraham acknowledged it was “unethical” to have sex with a medical resident.

It’s a very long story, and there’s a lot of he said/she said in it. Both physicians were intoxicated, both married, though Dr Abraham, then 43-years-old, was going through a divorce, and neither was really capable of consent. As her supervisor, Dr Abraham was contractually barred from a sexual relationship with a subordinate. An investigation resulted in no criminal charges. This is being made public because both Dr Abraham and Dr Phillips are suing.

The events of the June 2018 party spurred three separate investigations and three lawsuits – all now rolling back the confidentiality that usually cloaks how major institutions handle sexual misconduct claims. The cases chronicle sex, power and money in the male-dominated world of orthopedic surgery.

Both Phillips and Abraham say they were victims. They blame Jefferson and Rothman for protecting their institutional interests despite federal regulations that are supposed to ensure sexual assault cases are dealt with fairly.

Ahhh, yes, “protecting their institutional interests”. That’s what “institutions” do!

Jefferson used the threat of federal reporting requirements to force Abraham out of its hospitals while evading formal reports that would let other institutions know what happened.

Then Jefferson’s and Rothman’s leadership brokered a deal that avoided a sexual misconduct hearing and ultimately closed an investigation opened under the federal Title IX law prohibiting sex-based discrimination.

Rothman’s all-male board of directors decided not to fire Abraham. Instead, they restricted him from working in Jefferson’s hospitals or interacting with Jefferson residents. Eventually, they moved him to a hospital network not affiliated with Jefferson in New Jersey.

I remember when then-District Attorney Seth Williams went hard after Monsignor William Lynn, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s supervisor of priest assignments, who was convicted on one of two counts of child endangerment for “knowingly placing minors in danger when he reassigned troubled priests to parishes where they would have access to children.” Msgr Lynn wound up serving almost three years of his three-to-six year sentence, when his conviction was overturned, twice actually, for Mr Williams and Judge Teresa Sarmina misapplying the law.

So, with all of this, why isn’t current Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner going after Thomas Jefferson University and the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute for doing what is a very similar thing? According to the Inquirer, Rothman basically moved Dr Abraham to someplace where his conduct wasn’t widely known, and to a hospital network outside of their control . . . and their liability.

Amid investigations by the university and Rothman, Abraham said, a Jefferson top doctor offered him a deal in a private conversation: Take a voluntary leave, and we won’t report the alleged sexual misconduct.

Congress generally expects health institutions employing doctors accused of wrongdoing to file a report into the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a federal tracking system.

Hospitals must query the data bank before credentialing a newly hired doctor to ensure that the person hasn’t gotten into trouble elsewhere. Data bank reports also go to state licensing boards.

In court depositions, Abraham recalled getting a phone call from Edmund Pribitkin, chief physician and executive vice president of Jefferson Health, telling him that he had to take an immediate leave of absence from Jefferson.

If he didn’t do as told, Pribitkin said, the sexual assault allegations would go before the hospital’s medical executive committee and they’d likely have to report him to the NPDB, according to Abraham.

So, Rothman essentially blackmailed Dr Abraham into taking an immediate leave, by saying that the Institute would commit a crime by not reporting the sexual assault allegations. Perhaps it’s not just the District Attorney who needs to look into this, but the United States Attorney as well, given that this is an allegation of violation of federal law.

There’s a lot more information at the Inky’s original, and it’s not limited to subscribers, though if you access more than a few articles a month, the paywall does come down.

As a Mass-every-Sunday Catholic, I was very disappointed with the allegations against Msgr Lynn. At most, I saw what he was alleged to have done as a crime by Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, but when this became a criminal case, the Cardinal, by then retired, 88-years-old, and suffering from cancer and dementia, couldn’t be tried. Early in the trial, Judge Sarmina ruled that Cardinal Bevilacqua was able and competent to give testimony as a witness in the case, but just two days after her ruling, the Cardinal died in his sleep. But while Mr Williams and Judge Sarmina misapplied the law as it stood, which resulted in an unfair, and eventually reversed, conviction, the point that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia shuffled around offending priests to keep them from being defrocked or, worse, charged, tried, and convicted in sexual abuse cases was a valid one. Supervisory officials such as then Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, who was responsible for oversight of the campus police department, were all held accountable for covering up former Assistant Football Coach Jerry Sandusky’s rape of a young boy, though they were incarcerated for just a couple of months each.

The Inquirer’s story is the first step, and now law enforcement needs to look into this case. Yeah, there are some wealthy and powerful interests involved here, people able to pay for major league legal help, but the potential prosecution has plenty of money as well. Hold them accountable, and maybe some other good old boys network will think twice before covering up things.

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Danielle Outlaw will probably fire another good cop

To be a Philly cop, you must be politically correct and like totally #woke!

A Philly detective who handles sex crimes is under investigation for allegedly posting crude tweets about women, police say

Ron Kahlan’s account often tweeted vulgar sexual innuendo and used boorish language. Internal Affairs is investigating, police said.

by Chris Palmer and Ellie Rushing | Sunday, May 7, 2023 | 4:21 _PM EDT

A detective in the Philadelphia Police Department’s special victims unit who is assigned to investigate sex crimes is under internal investigation for a series of offensive tweets posted on his account over the years, including a number of crude sexual remarks about women.

“The only reason [I’m] watching the Phils now is because [of] the hot chick behind the on-deck circle!!!” read a tweet posted on Ron Kahlan’s Twitter page in 2012. That post was among the tamest of the tweets Kahlan allegedly wrote that were shared Saturday by an Instagram account called WatchOutPhilly.

In 2012? Holy calculator, Batman, that was 11 years ago! More, it was the latest of the tweets shown in the links; all of the rest pictured are dated in 2011.

In others, Kahlan’s account replied to pages such as “@ILikeGirlsDaily” with vulgar sexual innuendo and boorish language.

Many of the tweets in question were from 2011 or 2012, according to an Inquirer review. In more recent years, Kahlan’s account — which used the handle “@rkppd” — tended to comment instead on politics, often by making disparaging remarks about Democrats, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs.

If you read the entire article, you will note that nowhere in it is any contention that he wrote in any way differently about male Democrats. And the Inky’s story does not indicate any of the social media activities “with vulgar sexual innuendo and boorish language” occurred later than 2012.

In February, his account re-tweeted a post from another account asking if Christine Blasey Ford — the woman who accused then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault — should be arrested.

So, he didn’t write it himself, but retweeted someone else. And a lot people have thought that Dr Ford’s completely unsubstantiated allegations, in an attempt to deny Justice Kavanaugh confirmation, should entail some consequences for her, especially given that Mr Kavanaugh had actually kept detailed engagement calendars from the time, and none indicated that he ever attended the event Dr Ford alleged that he did. Why shouldn’t Dr Ford’s false allegations subject her to some negative consequences?

The Inquirer continues to note that the case has been turned over to Internal Affairs.

Many of the tweets on Kahlan’s page were crude, including comments about woman’s appearances and vulgar descriptions of sex acts.

Shockingly, it appears that Detective Kahlan is a normal male, attracted to women. No wonder the left are appalled!

You know what else isn’t in there? There are no allegations that the Detective unjustifiably threw any cases.

Kahlan, a 24-year veteran of the force, is not the first Philadelphia officer to come under scrutiny for his social media presence. In 2019, advocates with the Plain View Project published a database of racist or offensive Facebook posts or comments made by hundreds of city cops.

The Police Department went on to fire 15 officers and discipline dozens of others for what they wrote, an unprecedented undertaking. Still, some officers have since won their jobs back in arbitration proceedings mandated under the city’s contract with the police union.

So, the city engaged in a rush to judgement, and had to reinstate some of the officers.

Clearly, the standard is that a Philadelphia police officer must have zero social media presence, unless all of his postings are either innocuous things about birthdays and puppies and kittens, or politically support Democrats. I’m pretty sure that if Detective Kahlan had tweeted “Helen Gym is very attractive,” it would have been acceptable.

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In trying to avoid calling street gangs gangs, The Philadelphia Inquirer has again beclowned itself.

We have frequently mocked, as have others, when we were reliably informed by what I have frequently referred to as The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups.” Somehow, some way, the #woke[2]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 publisher and editors and journolists[3]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading at our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper just can’t bring themselves to say the word “gang.”

And here they go again!

West Philly street group members charged with three shootings, including two homicides

The investigation follows a December bust by the District Attorney’s Office’s Gun Violence Task Force

by Jesse Bunch and Ellie Rushing | Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Philadelphia law enforcement officials on Tuesday announced the arrests of four people affiliated with West Philadelphia street groups who they say are responsible for committing multiple shootings in 2021 that left two people dead.

The District Attorney’s Office, following an investigation that took longer than a year, said it has charged four people connected with the street groups known as “56st” and “524″ for their roles in the shooting deaths of two people in Southwest Philadelphia, as well as shootings that injured three others.

Roderick Williams, 23, faces charges of murder, attempted murder, and firearms violations in the shooting death of 21-year-old Michael Mines in April 2021, said Jeffrey Palmer, assistant supervisor of the District Attorney’s Office’s Gun Violence Task Force.

Williams is affiliated with “56st,” Palmer said, a group based in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood that also goes by “Christy Rec,” a reference to the nearby recreation center.

There’s more at the original.

The Inky’s original was 693 words long, in which I counted 11 uses of the word ‘group’ or ‘groups,’ and no use at all of the words ‘gang’ or ‘gangs.’ The previous Inquirer article linked in the blurb also used the words ‘group’ and ‘groups,’ but, in the sixth paragraph down, did use the description “rival gang”, almost certainly for prosaic reasons, since reporters Rodrigo Torrejón and Ellie Rushing used the word group earlier in the same sentence.

One wonders if they got the backs of their hands smacked by Inquirer Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar. 🙂

Of course, the Inky, which publisher Elizabeth Hughes promised to make an “anti-racist news organization,” is very, very worried about anything which could cast doubt on that:

A group of Black community advocates criticized a recent Inquirer investigation as racist and harmful

Advocates said the story perpetuated unfair stereotypes. The Inquirer’s editor said “the goal here was to bring a serious issue to light, and the story has done that.”

by Chris Palmer | Monday, May 1, 2023

A group of prominent Black community advocates gathered Monday to criticize a recent Inquirer investigation into how the city awarded millions in anti-violence grants as racist and harmful, calling it an unfair portrayal of the difficult work advocates have long been performing in communities suffering from high rates of gunfire.

Speaking at a news conference in North Philadelphia, Reuben Jones, executive director of the nonprofit Frontline Dads, said the story — which found that a city-run grant program had invested in some community nonprofits without budgets, employees, or directors — perpetuated racist stereotypes, including the notion that Black people from poor neighborhoods can’t be trusted to responsibly manage taxpayer money.

Standing before a group of about two dozen other advocates, Jones said: “These are the community members that represent healing … in the community that you don’t respect, that you don’t value, that you don’t trust.”

There’s more at the original, but the Inky’s story was basically pointing out that several — not all — of the organizations granted the funds did not have the kind of internal organizational structure which allowed either efficient spending or responsible reporting of expenditures.

But the city’s grant program (with administrative costs it totaled $22 million) was also marked by a politicized selection process that flushed millions of dollars into nascent nonprofits unprepared to manage the money — resulting in millions of dollars left unspent and tens of thousands unaccounted for, an Inquirer investigation has found.

Is that racist?

Speakers at Monday’s news conference defended the work that many grassroots organizations do, saying many have provided services for years without any outside funding or recognition. They said advocates frequently have to adjust tactics or spending to respond to the needs of participants, many of whom are difficult to reach — and that their groups should not be criticized for having to change course.

Holston was among the speakers who said the city needs to distribute more funding to grassroots organizations led by Black men and women. He added that critical reporting could make that more difficult to achieve.

“Do not bash the city for actually doing what we asked: To be creative and take a risk in the middle of an emergency. That’s what they’re supposed to do,” Holston said. “When you bash them like that, we can’t get them to do that again.”

You know what wasn’t in the article? There were no claims that the investigative article by the Inquirer actually got anything wrong, just that it was harmful for the newspaper to actually investigate the subject. But the Inky was worried enough that the top editor, Mr Escobar, felt the need to respond, something he rarely does.

So, if simply questioning what a civic organization does with government money is racist, I have to ask the next question: is referring to gangs, the word most people would use, racist, so racist that the Inky has to use the awkward formulation “street groups”? It’s not as though readers don’t know that the newspaper is referring to gangs.

Do the editors and journolists of the Inquirer simply assume that all readers will see the word ‘gang’ and read ‘black’? It’s not like all gangs are black gangs, but perhaps the denizens of the newsroom believe that they are.

In striving to become an “anti-racist news organization,” the Inquirer has beclowned itself. The vast majority of readers would have seen nothing special about the words ‘gang’ or ‘gangs,’ but the newspaper went through the blatantly obvious verbal contortions in a way which makes readers pay attention to the awkward phraseology, something which can only lead readers to do the opposite of what the Inky is trying to do, downplay the notions of gangs.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 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.

↑3 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.