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SEPTA should be paid for by the people who use it, not people who can’t use its service

Our house in Jim Thorpe.

I used to live in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, fifty miles north of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, did not have a bus or train service up into Carbon County; I commuted every day. Why, then, I asked myself, was I taxed to support and subsidize the people who did have SEPTA service in Philadelphia and its collar counties. I no longer live in the Keystone State, so this story doesn’t affect me, but the question still remains: why should my old neighbors and friends in Pennsylvania, many of whom are out of reach of SEPTA’s service area, be taxed to support a system they cannot use?

SEPTA wants more state sales-tax revenue to avoid ‘draconian’ service cuts next spring

A change in the law would give SEPTA an additional $190 million from the state sales tax each year to run its buses, trolleys and subways.

by Thomas Fitzgerald | Thursday, August 24, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In an effort to secure desperately needed funding, SEPTA officials are lobbying for a proposal in Harrisburg that would increase by about 45% the annual share of state sales-tax revenue devoted to paying for public transportation.

If their efforts are successful, the state’s Public Transportation Trust Fund would receive 6.4% of the money generated by the sales tax, up from 4.4%, generating an additional $295 million annually for public transit operations across the state. The sales tax itself would not increase.

SEPTA estimates that it would get an additional $190 million annually, with a $65.6 million increase for Pittsburgh Regional Transit and $38.8 million more for other systems, based on the state’s funding formula, which allocates dollars to transit agencies.

“We’ll really be able to prevent a draconian service reduction and extraordinary fare increases,” SEPTA CEO Leslie S. Richards said Wednesday when asked about the proposal. “That is what we will be left with when we get to next spring, if we don’t see a way out of this looming fiscal cliff.”

Part of that “looming fiscal cliff” would be from the $75,000 per year raise that the SEPTA Board gave CEO Leslie Richards just last May:

A panel of three board members reviewed publicly available salaries for the leaders of other large transit systems to help determine Richards’ salary, SEPTA said in a statement announcing the reappointment.

Perhaps, but shouldn’t that also be based on whether Mrs Richards was actually doing her job well?

SEPTA has been plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff:

One in six budgeted engineer positions is unfilled, per SEPTA figures, and the total number of train operators and trainees is 12% lower than it was in January 2019. Funding isn’t the problem, although overall the agency is generally worried about its fiscal future.

Billy Penn also reported that workers are leaving faster than positions can be filled. If Mrs Richards cannot keep these, to use the Democrats’ mantra, “good, well-paying, union jobs” filled, what does that say about her job performance?

Early Monday morning (June 12, 2023), a Trenton train was delayed because of “manpower issues.” A park and ride service at one station on the line was repeatedly canceled last week “due to operator unavailability.” On Friday (June 9, 2023), trips on the Market-Frankford and Broad Street subway lines were canceled for lack of workers. “Operator unavailability” is frequently given as the reason for delays and cancellations, especially on certain bus lines.

The unreliable service has sparked doubts SEPTA can step in to provide a needed workaround to the highway collapse.

“SEPTA better commit to quick and significant improvements of service or the city is going to see a major exodus from any northern suburb employees,” rider Kristen McCabe of Media wrote on Sunday.

Yet, despite all of that, despite SEPTA’s inability to manage the assets and service it currently has, there’s significant political pressure to build the Roosevelt Boulevard subway line, guesstimated to cost between $2.5 and 3.4 billion, in year 2000 dollars. We have previously noted The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story in which the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, admitted that they had “lost control of the train cars.”

The Biden Administration and the global warming climate change activists want us to all leave our cars behind — if we would even be allowed to own them — and depend on public transportation as much as possible. The Philadelphia Tribune reported that 42% of Black households and 50% of impoverished households in Philly don’t own a car, yet SEPTA has been hit with decreased ridership:

Ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and SEPTA needs those passengers back, officials say. Federal pandemic aid will run out by April 2024, and the agency depends on rider fares to make enough money to operate.

Really, who would want to depend on SEPTA? The trains are filthy, crime on board the buses and trains, and at the train and subway stations, has been increasing, and too many of the stations have become de facto homeless shelters, littered with trash and used hypodermic needles left by junkies.

That decreased ridership? It has been politically correct to lay the blame for that on the panicdemic — spelled exactly the way I see it, as a huge overreaction — and the fact that some Center City office workers who were able to work remotely during the COVID-19 shutdowns have found that pretty good, and are still doing so. But the crime and the filth are also to blame. It seems that the good Democrats in Philly, who gave 81.44% of their votes to Joe Biden, the President who wants them to use public transportation, aren’t quite so eager to ride SEPTA’s buses and trains.

And so we have Leslie Richards, $425,000 a year Leslie Richards, wanting to make the people in Jim Thorpe and Summit Hill and Mahanoy City have more of the sales taxes they pay go to help SEPTA, rather than those dollars coming back to their communities, even though Mrs Richards has proven that she cannot manage the system she oversees. SEPTA should be paid for not by the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but by the people who use the service, and fares should be increased to support that service.

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Whenever there is a truth you cannot tell, that is a truth you must tell!

We have previously noted that the Most Rev Salvatore Cordileone has stated that the Archdiocese of San Francisco would probably have to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Well, the time has come. From The New York Times:

Archdiocese of San Francisco Becomes the Latest to File for Bankruptcy

About a dozen dioceses and archdioceses in the United States are currently in bankruptcy proceedings as a result of multiple lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of children.

by Ruth Graham | Monday, August 21, 2023

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, photo from Archdiocese of San Francisco.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco, known for its outspoken conservative leadership, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone announced on Monday. The filing is intended to protect the archdiocese from what Archbishop Cordileone described as more than 500 civil lawsuits filed against it under a state law passed in 2019 that extended the statute of limitations for civil claims in child sexual abuse cases.

“We believe the bankruptcy process is the best way to provide a compassionate and equitable solution for survivors of abuse while ensuring that we continue the vital ministries to the faithful and to the communities that rely on our services and charity,” Archbishop Cordileone said in a letter addressed to Catholics in San Francisco.

Archbishop Cordileone signaled the bankruptcy earlier this month, warning publicly that the filing was “very likely.”

The article author, Ruth Graham, “is a Dallas-based national correspondent covering religion, faith and values for The New York Times. She graduated from Wheaton College and previously worked as a writer and reporter at Slate.” Telling us that she used to write for Slate is telling us that she’s a liberal, but what else would you expect from the Times? While she was very good at telling readers that several other diocese and archdiocese have been forced to file for bankruptcy over the cover ups of sexual abuse claims, she managed to write 547 words, and never mention what everybody already knows, that this is a crisis of having homosexual priests. Continue reading →

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Kendra Brooks just can’t handle the truth!

We reported yesterday evening on Philadelphia City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks and her posturing in front of Edward T Steel Elementary School. It was noted that Steel Elementary, which both defeated mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty and she touted as a victory for public schools, as Mrs Flaherty fought successfully to keep from being privatized, but Steel Elementary is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, in which 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math. Perhaps, we suggested, keeping Steel Elementary public rather than charter wasn’t that great a move. After all, it’s difficult to imagine that students could perform much worse than they already have!

It would be, of course, unfair to write an article on Miss Brooks and not let her know that I had done so, so I tweeted a reply to her. I do not know if Miss Brooks read the linked article, but, as of 8:18 AM EDT, Twitter analytics indicates that there were three clicks on the link, along with three profile visits generated by my reply.

Well, I got my reply from the Councilwoman, in a manner that doesn’t really surprise me. 🙂

So funny! Miss Brooks is a member of the Philadelphia City Council, which makes her a person of some political power, and one would think that information on the public school she touted ought to be important to her. But, rather than worrying about Steel Elementary’s, a school she said her daughter attended, poor performance, Miss Brooks chose instead to stick her head in the sand. Political posturing trumps actually doing something to help.

I attended the public schools. When I was in Mt Sterling High School, 1967 to 1971, we had exactly one teacher who had his master’s; all of the others topped out with baccalaureate degrees. A 1937 WPA/CCC building, we had no air conditioning, the teachers had no union, the building was heated by radiators via a boiler in the basement, there had been no cafeteria until the Elementary School across the street was built in 1961, there was no school bus service, and this was well before personal computers and that internet thingy Al Gore invented. Yet somehow, some way, everyone who was graduated could actually read his diploma. We had no metal detectors or security guards, and boys traded pocketknives and argued whether K-Bar or Buck made better blades, on the school’s right front portico, at the top of the tall steps. Oddly enough, no one was stabbed, nor was anyone worried about it. If there was a fight in the parking lot, as happened at least a few times, it was two guys, with a circle of spectators cheering on one or the other, and the odds were good that at least one, if not both of them, had knives in their pockets, but the knives never came out.

Of course, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Mrs Flaherty for Mayor, which supports Miss Brooks, would be absolutely aghast at all of that. Why, they’d sputter, teachers have to get their master’s degrees within just a few years, but it has to be asked: why, if advanced degrees are so necessary, did a small-town school in the South do a better job in actually educating its students when every teacher but one had only a bachelor’s degree?

Is it possible, just possible, that everything that the teachers’ unions have been pushing is exactly the wrong thing?

That, of course, is the kind of question that Working Families Party politicians like Kendra Brooks does not want asked, and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers most certainly don’t want answered. They just can’t handle the truth!

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Killadelphia: We knew all along whom the Usual Suspects would blame!

500 block of North Creighton Street, via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

We have previously noted the shooting in the 500 block of North Creighton Street in West Philadelphia. A semi-dilapidated neighborhood with a few rowhouses boarded up, it’s wholly unsurprising that City Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier would blame it not on bad guys or street gangs, but “massive blight and disinvestment.”

Police identified the 19-year-old man who was fatally shot at a West Philly block party

Kevin July, 19, was fatally shot early Saturday on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, police said. Another eight people were wounded in the incident at a late-night outdoor party.

by Chris Palmer and Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, August 21, 2023

Philadelphia Police on Monday identified the man who was fatally shot at what officials are now calling an unpermitted block party over the weekend as 19-year-old Kevin July, saying he was one of nine people shot in the violent episode in West Philadelphia’s Mill Creek section. The eight other victims survived, police said.

Still, authorities have released few other new details about the crime as they continue to investigate, saying they were not yet sure of a motive, nor were they even certain how many people opened fire during the incident.

July’s relatives declined to comment when contacted by phone Monday.

The shooting happened on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, police said, when shooters fired at least 60 shots into a crowd of dozens of people who had gathered for a party or barbecue. The celebration took place at end of the rowhouse-lined street that dead ends in between Wyalusing and Westminster Avenues.

The article noted that the block party had not applied for or received a permit for such, and that permitted block parties must end at 8:30 PM. Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore told the media that shell casings from at least three different types of ammunition had been recovered, and that means only one thing: gangs!

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the area, said in an interview that she’d spoken to the captain of the 16th Police District and been told that the event was a private gathering that had attracted guests from elsewhere, and that some people who live on the block “didn’t even know people who engaged in the dispute.” . . . .

She also said Mill Creek, the neighborhood in which the shooting occurred, is burdened by “massive blight and disinvestment,” including city-owned properties that have grown dilapidated. And she said the city should focus on investing in housing, clearing vacant lots, and improving the nearby recreation center as ways to improve conditions that can lead to violence.

“The chronic disinvestment experienced in neighborhoods like West Mill Creek lends to the thought that nobody cares here, anything goes here,” she said.

Would you invest in an area like that? If I were going to invest my money in something, it would be something which showed an at least plausible return on investment. West Mill Creek is not a place in which that plausible return on investment exists.

I grew up poor, too, reared by a divorced mother, alone, with two younger sisters, but somehow, some way, I did get involved with street gangs, and I never shot anyone. Poverty is no excuse!

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Kendra Brooks fouls up. Perhaps celebrating a clearly failing public school isn't a good look

Kendra Brooks is an at-large Philadelphia City Councilwoman, who won on the Working Families Party line, with the WFB being even further left than the already far-left Democrats. She has also been affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.

Upon hearing that Commonwealth Partners will be supporting pro-school choice candidates, Miss Brooks tweeted:

My path to politics began when school privatizers tried to close my daughter’s school. We fought privatization then and will keep fighting it now.

No amount of GOP money can buy community support.

Her tweet included a photo of the Councilwoman, her arms defiantly crossed, and a stern look on her face, in front of the Edward T Steel Elementary School.

We’ve reported on Steel Elementary before, because then Democratic mayoral candidate Helen Gym Flaherty campaigned in front of that school, proudly proclaiming that she saved the school from ‘going charter.’ Miss Brooks, a strong supporter of Mrs Flaherty’s, then 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.

Being a numbers kind of guy, I did some research. Yes, Steel Elementary is still a Philadelphia public school. But how good a school is it? Steel Elementary is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, in which 8% of students tested grade-level proficient in reading, and a whopping 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math. Perhaps keeping Steel Elementary public rather than charter wasn’t that great a move. After all, it’s difficult to imagine that students could perform much worse than they already have!

Fortunately, Mrs Flaherty finished third in the Democratic mayoral primary, and her public school teacher supported campaign simply failed.

The primary was three months ago, but apparently Miss Brooks hasn’t yet learned the lesson: if you pose in front of, and celebrate a particular public school, maybe, just maybe, you ought to have some idea of just what the school’s performance is, because there will always be someone like me who will check the numbers.

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The Feds create the demand, and then give private investors money to increase the supply!

I had previously noted, on Christmas Eve of 2021, that I spotted six Tesla TSLA: (%) charging stations at the Wawa at the junction of Pennsylvania Route 61 and Interstate 78. Five of the chargers were unoccupied, while a sixth was blocked by a mid-1990s, gasoline-engine beater car, using the charging area as a parking space. 🙂

Alas! That was the last time I’ve been to a Wawa, and as someone who truly appreciates Wawa coffee, that is a tragedy. I have some hope, in that Wawa is expanding into the Bluegrass State, and there’s a permit application for construction of a Wawa at the junction of Interstate 75 and Athens-Boonesboro Road, about 30 miles from me, but someplace I could stop on my way to our daughter’s house.

At any rate, I was thinking about those six unused Tesla chargers when I read this, in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Electric vehicle drivers can soon get a Shorti and a charge-up at some Wawas

The federal infrastructure law allocates $7.5 billion for new public charging stations for electric vehicles. Pennsylvania expects $171 million.

by Thomas Fitzgerald | Monday, August 21, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently awarded $34 million in federal grants for businesses to build fast-charging stations for electric vehicles in 35 counties across the state, part of a Federal Highway Administration program to spur the development of EV infrastructure.

Note that this is not a federal loan program, but specifically “federal grants,” for businesses to build commercial plug-in electric car charging stations, on which they hope to turn a profit.

Outlets are planned at the massive Breezewood gas-and-go junction of Interstate 70 and the turnpike, a number of motels, existing charging hubs built by Tesla and other suppliers — and around here, Wawas in Bristol, Horsham, Lansdale, Philadelphia, and Woodlyn.

The 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $7.5 billion over five years to help make EV charging more accessible nationally. Pennsylvania expects to get about $172 million.

“The electric-vehicle fleet is growing in Pennsylvania — there will be more tomorrow than today and more the day after that,” Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll said at an announcement event outside Scranton on Aug. 15.

Why, I have to ask, are our tax dollars being distributed to install commercial electric car charging stations? If people choose to buy plug-in electric vehicles, there will be a growing demand which will cause entrepreneurs to build such stations, using their own money, in order to turn a profit.

Pennsylvania had 47,400 fully electric vehicles registered at the end of 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. New Jersey had 87,030.

With a population of 9,261,699, New Jersey is less populous than Pennsylvania’s Census Bureau guesstimated 12,972,008, yet the Garden State has nearly twice as many electric vehicles. I guess that proves that Pennsylvanians are smarter than Jerseyites. Having spent some time in traffic on the Garden State Parkway, I shudder to think what it would be like, worrying about a steadily declining battery charge. You can get a five-gallon can of gasoline, but not a five-gallon can of electricity!

Lack of charging infrastructure has been a barrier to sales of EVs, along with high sticker prices relative to vehicles that run on fossil fuels. In turn, that complicates the ambitious federal goal that 50% of the nation’s new cars and trucks be electric by 2030, in order to reduce carbon emissions that cause global warming. . . . .

A major goal of the EV charging program is to use federal dollars to stimulate private investment in the technology, as well as in batteries and vehicles, said Andrew Rogers, deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

“The ecosystem of charging that’s already underway is really impressive,” Rogers said in an interview. “The private sector has just stepped up in ways that have demonstrated the catalyzing effect of the law.”

If the private sector has “just stepped up” in the way Mr Rogers stated, why does the federal government need to tax poorer people to prop up wealthier investors?

Further down:

Since the Biden administration took office in 2021, the number of publicly available charging stations has increased 40%, with the private sector investing $130 billion in that effort, and developing longer-lasting EV batteries and production lines for the vehicles, Rogers said.

Last month, seven automakers from Detroit, Asia, and Europe joined in an effort to build 30,000 fast-charging ports in the United States and Canada that will work with any brand of electric vehicle

But if the private sector have invested $130 billion in these efforts, why does the federal government have to do this? Oh, wait, the newspaper gave us the answer:

The companies said one of their main goals was to qualify for federal subsidies for charging infrastructure.

Translation: supping at the federal trough to make money for private investors.

I can see why Wawa wants in on this program. While just about the only thing I ever bought at Wawa is their coffee, the convenience store also sells hoagies, snacks, and just about anything else a traveler might want to eat-and-go. The newspaper article claimed that, “Fast chargers can replenish a drained battery in 10 to 30 minutes,” but most sources state that it can take an hour or longer, unless the stop is to recharge just enough to make it home safely. For a business like Wawa, people having to sit around for half an hour or longer means more coffee, more sodas, and more hoagies sold.

If a business wants to add public charging stations, that’s absolutely fine with me; it’s none of my business. But when the federal government is throwing the dollars it taxes away from me for something the private sector has already been doing, then yeah, it becomes my business! And I say not just no, but Hell no!

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Killadelphia: Just because 60 bullets flew doesn’t mean it was gang related!

Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Chris Palmer’s last paragraph contained an element of truth that Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would like for you not to realize:

More than 1,100 people have been shot in the city as of Wednesday, according to police statistics, and 245 of those victims have died. The pace of gunfire was about 23% lower than last year, the statistics show, but still much higher than the years before 2020, when gun violence began hitting record heights.

The impetus for Mr Palmer’s story? Yet another gang-banger shooting in West Philadelphia!

Seven people were shot, one fatally, during possible shoot-out at West Philly block party, police say

Several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m., police said.

by Chris Palmer | Saturday, August 19, 2023 | 12:42 PM EDT

Seven people were shot, one fatally, when several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on a West Philadelphia street early Saturday morning, according to police.

The shooting happened about 1:30 a.m. on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, said Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 51, he said.

The 500 block of North Creighton Street is a poor, mostly black, rowhouse street, but, as we have reported previously, the good people of West Philadelphia don’t want public projects to make the area nicer, because that might cause more white people to move there.

Some witnesses described the shooting as a “shoot-out” at a block party or barbecue on the rowhouse street, said Vanore, though he added that detectives were in the early stages of gathering information and evidence.

A woman who lives on the block said in an interview that at least 100 people had been outside for a birthday party before gunfire erupted. . . . .

“It was a nice party — they were dancing, drinking, having fun, and then these knuckleheads [opened fire],” said the woman, who declined to give her name due to fear of retribution.

One of the victims, a 19-year-old man, was pronounced dead early Saturday, said Vanore. He declined to identify the man pending family notification.

Creighton Avenue PPD report, via Steve Keeley.

The Philadelphia Police reported that the deceased was a 19-year-old black male, but naturally, the Inquirer scrubbed the victim’s race from the report, even though the Philadelphia Police Department provided it. However, anyone ever remotely familiar with the City of Brotherly Love simply assumed that the deceased was black, just from the area.

There’s a truth that the Inky simply won’t report. The deceased was “shot several times to the face”, which tells you all that you really need to know: this was a deliberately targeted gang hit. We were, of course, reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer 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,” something that the newspaper has now come to use as well. I suppose that the word “gang” is now racist somehow, as though there cannot be any white gangs out there.

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Californie ain’t the place you wanna be! "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein

After Jed Clampett struck oil when he missed a shot at some game he wanted for the dinner table, and became an instant millionaire, his kinfolk said that he needed to get away from the hillbilly life, and that “Californie is the place you wanna be, so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly.”

Hills, that is. Swimming pools, movie stars.

Well, these days, perhaps Californie ain’t the place you wanna be. Ballot Proposition 47, which passed 4,238,156 (59.61%) to 2,871,943 (40.39%) on November 4, 2014, reduced several (purportedly) non-violent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors:

  • Shoplifting, where the value of property stolen does not exceed $950
  • Grand theft, where the value of the stolen property does not exceed $950
  • Receiving stolen property, where the value of the property does not exceed $950
  • Forgery, where the value of forged check, bond or bill does not exceed $950
  • Fraud, where the value of the fraudulent check, draft or order does not exceed $950
  • Writing a bad check, where the value of the check does not exceed $950
  • Personal use of most illegal drugs (Below a certain threshold of weight)

Robert Stacy McCain has been calling California a kleptocracy for some time now, but, of course, he’s just another evil Right Wing Extremist, so his views don’t matter.

It has been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, something certainly not entirely true, as I have not been mugged; whether Mr McCain has been, I do not know. But what happens when reporters for the liberal Cable News Network get robbed?

CNN reporter burglarized a third time while covering rampant crime in the Bay Area

Kyung Lah warns tourists visiting San Francisco and Oakland, ‘do not leave a single thing in your car’

By Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News | Wednesday, August 2, 2023 | 9:00 PM EDT

A CNN crew has been burglarized a third time while covering the rampant crime in the Bay Area of California.

CNN correspondent Kyung Lah took to Twitter on Wednesday and shared video of her crew’s car with a completely-shattered window.

“I’m #Oakland, shooting a story about crime. Got broken into again— but this time our car was completely empty. We were across the street— this happened in seconds,” Lah wrote. “Even tho the car is empty, the thieves break in and lower the seat so they can steal anything in the trunk. Our trunk was empty. If you come to San Francisco or Oakland, do not leave a single thing in your car. Ours was thankfully empty.”

The CNN reporter continued:

If you’re here keeping track, this is the 3rd time my CNN rented car has been broken into in the Bay Area in the last year. But I’ve finally learned to not leave even a candy bar in the car anymore (still doesn’t stop the car break in but at least we don’t lose anything)

“(A)t least we don’t lose anything,” she wrote, but, then again, it wasn’t really her car, was it?

At the rental car return lot, the employee tells us of the 250 cars returned yesterday, 27 had been broken into, just more than 10% of cars returned

Just how long will the rental car agency be able to stay in business if 10.8% of the vehicles it rents out come back damaged like that? The agency’s insurance rates will have to increase, along with the repair costs within the deductible, and that means the price to rent a car will get jacked up. At what point do businessmen simply say, “This [insert slang term for feces here] just isn’t worth it”?

Fox News had a story on Miss Lah’s previous encounter with crime.

We previously wrote, At some point, you’d think that even the most liberal of the liberals would realize that without some semblance of law and order, you no longer have civilization! Yes, after fifteen good years in the Keystone State before I retired, I tend to concentrate on crime, mostly violent crime, in Philadelphia.

Carjackers beat a man to death in Northern Liberties, police say

The incident occurred late Thursday night, according to police, when two men pulled a 60-year-old from his vehicle and beat him before fleeing the scene in his car.

by Beatrice Forman | Friday, August 18, 2023

A pair of carjackers assaulted a man before fleeing the scene and taking his vehicle, leaving him for dead in Northern Liberties Thursday night, Philadelphia police say.

The incident occurred just before 10 p.m. on Third and Cambridge Streets, when two masked men pulled up on what a witness told police was a dirt bike. Then, the pair pulled a 60-year-old man from the driver’s seat of a parked 2023 Toyota Highlander, according to the witness account that police relayed to reporters.

That would be a “small, frail, thin, lightweight” 60-year-old Asian man, according to the Philadelphia Police. They sure proved how manly they are!

An altercation ensued before one of the masked men took off in the Highlander and the other took off in the on the dirt bike, according to police.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found the 60-year-old laying in the street as witnesses attempted to render aid.

“He was bleeding from the head. He was semi-conscious,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters. “He was unable to stand up.”

The victim was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, but was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

Officers tracked the location of the Highlander to Camden, where it was recovered unoccupied by Camden police. The dirt bike was last seen traveling north on Third toward Girard Avenue Thursday night.

So, whatever the thugs had planned — and remember: they didn’t know that the victim they beat had died — they simply dumped the car they stole on the far side of the Ben Franklin Bridge, and at least one of them was back in Philly, and while Northern Liberties isn’t that bad an area, heading north on Third takes you to some not so great parts of town. But the innocent man they beat lost his life over what turned out to be a joyride for the thugs, and the odds are pretty good that the carjackers, the killers, were teenagers, and juveniles.

Beatrice Forman, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, cannot always choose the stories she is assigned; news comes in, and has to be written up. She is, after all, a “general assignments reporter.” But when I read her bio at the bottom of her article, where it said that she “enjoys covering Philly-specific tomfoolery,” I had to wonder how she felt about this specific bit of tomfoolery, because, the way it ended, at least on the part of the killers, was little more than tomfoolery as far as they were concerned.

We have previously noted Oakland/Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, yet another one of the ‘progressive’ civil rights defense lawyers funded by George Soros, like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, who are softer-than-Charmin on crime. These idiots good people believe that they are somehow doing something good and noble by keeping oh-so-misunderstood young men out of jail, but what they have created, and what the Pyrite State’s Proposition 47 has enabled, a situation in which crime has few consequences, a situation in which crime has been enabled, and the ‘tomfoolery’ of a joyride into Camden has left an innocent man stone-cold graveyard dead.

Civilization requires civility, and civilization requires law and order, to keep the people living in it safe. Perhaps CNN correspondent Kyung Lah didn’t really feel the full effects of the car break-ins while she was reporting on crime in the Bay Area, because, after all, it wasn’t her car. But other people are feeling it, the rental car agency which has to repair the vehicle her producer and she rented, and the extra costs which that imposes on the agency, and eventually, its next customers. The people of Ward 8 in the District of Columbia are feeling the effects of crime, as the only grocery supermarket there is at least looking at closing its doors due to rampant shoplifting, and the store’s employees might feel the effects of crime as they could lose their jobs if the store closes. Michael Salerno’s family are feeling the effects, as he was murdered during a carjacking attempt, allegedly by a 15-year-old. “The latest serial carjacker had all of his cases dismissed in juvenile court and slaughtered a 19yo while on ankle monitor GPS.”

I would like to believe that Miss Price and Mr Krasner and the rest of the ‘progressive’ prosecutors are genuinely good people, who actually believe that what they are doing will reduce crime and create a better society, rather than just evil, because good people can eventually learn from their mistakes, from the consequences of their actions and policies. I would like to believe that ‘progressives’ in general are seeing the consequences of the policies they support, and at least considering whether conservatives have been right all along, and that crime needs to be punished, and punished harshly. I would like to believe that good people could see that excusing lesser crimes, crimes which could put the malefactors in jail for five years, does the bad guys no favors, when, instead of being able to look forward to being released in a few years, they have been enabled to commit crimes which could get them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

Sadly, if that is going to happen, it hasn’t happened yet, as the good, white liberals who live in Society Hill and University City voted for the Larry Krasner-supporting Helen Gym Flaherty, because crime hasn’t come to their doorsteps yet. Perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Lah and her staff have learned the hard lesson the easy way, and might at least consider voting for conservatives, rather than the same old, same old who have enabled America’s large cities to turn into crime-ridden [insert slang term for feces here]holes. California is run almost completely by liberal Democrats, and Philly hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Harry Truman was President.

Albert Einstein, usually considered a fairly smart fellow, once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I keep hoping that our ‘progressives,’ who consider themselves to be very smart people indeed, eventually see that, despite their very good and noble intentions, that what they have been doing, how they have cast their votes, has led to only bad results.

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The Associated Press will happily tell you what their biases are . . . if you pay them!

We have frequently mocked The Philadelphia Inquirer’s very much unpublished stylebook, a manual and guide concerning how things should be expressed, in its use of “Black and brown” to refer to minority communities. While I cannot document this, it appears that the Inquirer use the Associated Press Stylebook, which was modified , in June of 2020,to capitalize “black” in reference to race, but not capitalize “white.”

After changing its usage rules last month to capitalize the word “Black” when used in the context of race and culture, The Associated Press on Monday said it would not do the same for “white.” The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. Protests following the death of George Floyd, which led to discussions of policing and Confederate symbols, also prompted many news organizations to examine their own practices and staffing. The Associated Press, whose Stylebook is widely influential in the industry, announced June 19 it would make Black uppercase. In some ways, the decision over “white” has been more ticklish. The National Association of Black Journalists and some Black scholars have said white should be capitalized, too. “We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems,” Daniszewski said. “But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

Translation: this was all political. Capitalizing ‘Black’ but not ‘white,’ or, in the Inquirer’s amusing permutation, ‘brown,’ is really kind of silly, and has caused some people to notice it, but it really shouldn’t lead to much overt bias.

But some of what is in the AP Stylebook is overtly biased. From National Review:

AP Stylebook Issues Guide for Transgender Coverage

by Abigail Anthony | July 22, 2022 | 7:23 PM EDT

The Associated Press Stylebook, which for decades has served as the default style manual for most news organizations, has issued a “Topical Guide” for transgender coverage that encourages writers to use “unbiased language” and to “avoid false balance [by] giving a platform to unqualified claims or sources in the guise of balancing a story by including all views.”

Yet the guidance appears to explicitly embrace the language and claims of transgender activists, a move likely to steer newsrooms away from objectively framing the issue.

The AP Stylebook has issued prior guidance related to gender and sexuality, and some of that is repackaged in the Topical Guide. But it does include some updates, together providing an extensive reference for journalists.

The Transgender Coverage Topical Guide explains: “A person’s sex and gender are usually assigned at birth by parents or attendants and can turn out to be inaccurate. Experts say gender is a spectrum, not a binary structure consisting of only men and women, that can vary among societies and can change over time.” The guide encourages writers to refer to subjects according to their preferred gender identity. The guide condemns “deadnaming,” or referring to a transgender person’s previous name, because that “can be akin to using a slur and can cause feelings of gender dysphoria to resurface.”

The guide explains that the word “identify” can be useful, but alternative phrasing “like ‘is a woman’ is more to the point than ‘identifies as a woman.’”

Translation: the Associated Press Stylebook carries the implicit assumption that a ‘transgender’ person is the sex he[1]In English grammar, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine, and thus, in cases in which the sex of the person to which a pronoun refers is not known, the masculine pronouns are … Continue reading claims to be, not his actual sex.

Deadline noted, on June 3, 2023:

The Associated Press style guide – which sets the agenda for how most major media uses its words and phrases in reporting, thus shaping society views – has come out with new guidelines on gender.

The AP now instructs journalists to respect LGBTQ subjects’ preferred pronouns and to avoid terms like “biological sex.”

The new guide also suggested avoiding phrases like “both sexes,” indicating there are more than two that people use. Journalists should also avoid referring to a trans person as being born a boy or girl, with “sex assigned at birth” the new preferred usage.

Think about that. Not only does Deadline note that the AP Stylebook is “shaping society views,” but has gone all in on attempting to push the cockamamie notions that there are more than two sexes, and that sex is somehow “assigned at birth.” We have known for a century that the sex of every mammal is determined by whether the male’s sperm cell which fertilizes the female’s egg is carrying either the X or the Y chromosome, and that the male has exactly zero biological role in procreation after sexual intercourse and fertilization of the egg. The sex of the offspring is determined at conception, and simply recognized at birth, but the AP Stylebook stresses something factually false.

Dawn Stacy Ennis of Forbes has more on this silliness, and she is writing from the perspective of someone who supports transgenderism.

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

What does all of this do? By controlling the language, the AP is attempting to control the discussion; by the broad acceptance of the AP Stylebook, most major media in the country are going along with it. The AP do not like, and advises against, “deadnaming,” which is referring to a transgender person by the name given at birth, which almost always corresponds to the person’s sex. Thus, virtually every credentialed media source referred to Lia Thomas rather than Will Thomas, because they were going along with the attempt to persuade people that Mr Thomas is actually Miss Thomas.

The Associated Press also do not want you to refer to a person being ‘transgender’ unless transgenderism is specifically the topic. Thus, according to the Stylebook, Dr Richard Levine, the United States Assistant Secretary for Health, is not only to be referred to as Rachel Levine, as he now claims to be a woman, but not to inform readers that Dr Levine is transgender; readers who do not actually know are expected to assume that Dr Levine really is a woman.

This has real consequences. How many people would simply trust Dr Levine’s medical judgement, because he is a physician, who would otherwise not if they knew that he really is a man male claiming to be a woman? This is a question the AP do not want asked!

So, why do I bring this up? Today, @APStylebook tweeted:

We don’t have a new print Stylebook this year, but there’s plenty that’s new on AP Stylebook Online.
Subscribe for our latest guidance. You can opt in to notifications when we update entries.

Translation: they will give you a guidebook of our journolistic[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 biases, if you will pay them for it!

The First Street Journal does not claim to be an unbiased news source, but what we have done is to create and publish our own Stylebook, which can easily be found on the menu bar below the site title. You may not agree with our point of view, but we do not hide anything.

Who knows, some of our readers may actually believe that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, but we very explicitly tell you if a person claims to be the opposite sex from what he was born, and if you disagree with our editorial position, you are at least able to take an informed decision. That’s something the Associated Press do not want you to be able to do.

References

References
↑1 In English grammar, properly understood, the masculine subsumes the feminine, and thus, in cases in which the sex of the person to which a pronoun refers is not known, the masculine pronouns are properly used, while formulations such as “he or she” are evidence that the writer does not understand proper grammar.
↑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.