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No, they’re not going after just your gas stove; the #ClimateChange activists want to get rid of all of your gas appliances.

We were told that no, the government isn’t coming for your gas stove. We were told that it was just gaslighting — pardon the very much intended pun — of conservatives. But I sure am seeing a lot of advocacy articles in my media sources from people who want to do just that, ban gas stoves.

Gas stoves should be banned in Philadelphia

After the Port Richmond explosion, the city must transition away from gas and toward electricity.

by Zakaria Hsain and Erin K. Reagan | Tuesday, January 17, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

Erin K Reagan, from her LinkedIn biography page.[1]Zakaria Hsain is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Erin K. Reagan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.

Erin Reagan? Not the Erin Reagan played by Bridget Moynahan on Blue Bloods? 🙂 No? Well, it is difficult to disagree with a pretty redhead, but, alas! I must.

Every day, Philadelphians are exposed to silent health hazards from gas stoves, boilers, and heaters. Gas appliances release dangerously high levels of pollutants, even when turned off. Many of these pollutants are toxic, carcinogenic, or associated with a higher risk of asthma and other respiratory diseases, particularly in children.

Ahhh, there you have it! Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan aren’t just after your gas stove, but all of your natural gas appliances, including boilers and heaters.

Of course, Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan know, or should know, that modern gas appliances do not have the pilot lights to which they referred when they stated that gas appliances are releasing pollutants even when turned off. Rather, they have electric sparks which ignite the gas when the appliances are activated. Yes, older gas appliances do have those things, but as remodels and rebuilds gradually replace the older appliances, the pilot light appliances are gradually being reduced.

The evidence is overwhelming, and it clearly shows that using gas in residential buildings is dangerous to the lives, health, and long-term welfare of Philadelphians. Just as the new year began, Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood was rocked by an explosion that destroyed three houses and left many injured and traumatized. Some pipeline safety experts say that the cause may have been a gas leak, though an ongoing Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) investigation found no flaws in its distribution lines.

When it was reported that no gas line leaks were discovered, my mind went instantly to one thought: meth lab! Of course, I have no information at all confirming such, but if there were no gas line leaks, then a gas explosion had to be cause by something other than the problems the authors attribute to the gas infrastructure in parts of the 769-word OpEd that I have not quoted.

City leaders and PGW may promise to upgrade or better maintain an aging, nearly 6,000-mile-long gas distribution network to mitigate the risk of explosions, but this does little to address the other health and climate risks. Additionally, maintaining this network may expose PGW to financial distress and stranded asset risk if the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which Pennsylvania recently joined, should impose carbon pricing on gas utilities.

And not only maintaining but improving and increasing the electrical production and distribution network will not? How many older homes in the City of Brotherly Love have only 100-amphere electric service? To run the “heat pumps, electric resistance and induction stoves, and electric space heaters” the authors said should replace gas appliances in a paragraph further down requires modern, 200-amp service. Do you have any idea what it costs to have a qualified, licensed electrician — particularly in a union-dominated city like Philly — upgrade electrical service?

More, heat pump HVAC systems use forced air duct work, but if you live in a Philly row home in which your natural gas or heating oil boiler pumped hot water or steam into cast iron radiators, you’ll need all-new ductwork installed as well. Did the authors consider that?

The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source. It sure is nice on really cold days.

The heat pump that is the primary heating unit in our home is powered by two 220-volt, 50-amp circuits, one for the condenser, and one for the HVAC unit. The HVAC unit has an emergency heat setting, in which electric heating elements are activated when it’s too cold outside for the condenser to draw much heat from the outside air. Then add another 220-volt, 40- or 50-amp circuit for the electric or induction ranges Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan want you to use, plus a 220-volt, 30- or 40-amp circuit for an electric clothes dryer, and you’re talking about some real electric demand.

We have the supplemental, and occasionally backup, heat source of a gas — propane, actually, since there is no natural gas available out in our rural area — fireplace. When the electricity fails — and, delivered via overhead wires, electricity is our most vulnerable-to-the-weather utility — our propane fireplace, range (not the oven) and water heater still work. As we have previously noted, we’ve been without electricity for 4½ days due to winter storms.

The authors, further down, state that the city:

should introduce a retailer rebate program to incentivize the installation of electric appliances, modify its building code to mandate electrification of new residential buildings, and set minimum energy-efficiency standards that would encourage the adoption of efficient electric appliances in existing buildings and improve insulation and construction practices. In all this, the city should prioritize the electrification of public housing units and provide direct financial assistance to low-income homeowners.

While some fear that electrification would be cost-prohibitive, costs to property owners can be kept modest if no new buildings are connected to gas, gas appliances are replaced as their lifetimes end, and the city commits to providing financial and technical assistance to households. To further defray the costs of electrification, the city can apply for federal funding through the $550 million Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, as well as encourage eligible homeowners to benefit from up to $14,000 in federal incentives provided through the Inflation Reduction Act.

The last time I heard, Philadelphians also pay federal taxes, so it isn’t as though “federal incentives” don’t somehow cost city residents money.

Philadelphia’s leaders must get serious about the dangers of gas. Enacting policies that advance building electrification, while transitioning PGW to an alternative business model, is the only way to effectively safeguard the health and well-being of Philadelphians, now and in the future.

Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan write as though there are no dangers in electricity, but as someone who has done electrical work, I can assure you that there are. Electrical circuits improperly installed can lead to fires, and with the costs of getting licensed, professional electricians to install upgraded service and the additional wiring required to operate the new electrical appliances the authors want you to have, it’s not too difficult to imagine some homeowners or their jackleg brothers-in-law doing that work instead. Electric space heaters, which the authors mentioned as things people could use in their sixth paragraph, have caused, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, about 1,100 house fires across the country every year, roughly 32% of all home heating-caused house fires. Yet, with the heat pumps the authors advocate being relatively poor performers in extremely hot, on the air conditioning side, or extremely cold outside weather, people will be using those electric space heaters.

We have reported how well-to-do New Englanders, people living in very Democratic states, still love to have modern gas heating, ranges and water heaters installed during expensive remodels, because gas heating simply works best in the cold-weather states. Electricity is the primary heating ‘fuel’ only in the southeastern United States, with our milder winters in which heat pumps can usually keep up.[2]In the more rural southeast, fewer homes have natural gas service available, and it is much easier to run electric lines to homes separated from others by some distance. We have propane on our farm. Even the brutally cold days, of which we do get a few, don’t normally last too many days in a row.

The northeast? Heating systems are most frequently fueled by natural gas or heating oil, because those systems simply provide more heat than electric heat pumps. People use what is available to them, and what actually works well. Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan either don’t understand that, or if they do, simply don’t care. The Patricians have never really cared about the burdens they impose on the plebeians.

References

References
↑1 Zakaria Hsain is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Erin K. Reagan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.
↑2 In the more rural southeast, fewer homes have natural gas service available, and it is much easier to run electric lines to homes separated from others by some distance. We have propane on our farm.
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Nice guys will never solve Kensington’s problems Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here] to get things done

The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer is, since publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes took over, and the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski, has been the wokest of the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading, so it’s rare for me to see them get something even half-right, but half right they got it:

It’s going to take more than $20 million to help the people of Kensington | Editorial

Without a comprehensive plan to clear the open-air drug markets and help those struggling with addiction and homelessness, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

by The Editorial Board | Sunday, January 15, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST

The city’s plan to steer millions of dollars to Kensington to combat the opioid crisis is a much-needed welcome start. But without a comprehensive plan to address the rampant open-air drug markets and homelessness lining the main business corridor there, the city will be throwing good money after bad.

Mayor Jim Kenney announced plans to distribute $20 million to community groups in Kensington to fund a variety of efforts, including overdose prevention, home repairs, and improvements to parks and schools.

The money is part of the $200 million Philadelphia expects to receive over 18 years as part of a national settlement with Johnson & Johnson and three drug distribution firms that helped fuel the opioid crisis.

Overall, Pennsylvania expects to receive $1.6 billion as part of the settlement negotiated by then-Attorney General (and now Gov.-elect) Josh Shapiro.

To their credit, Kenney and District Attorney Larry Krasner initially balked at the city’s portion of the settlement, given the scale of the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia, which has resulted in more than 1,100 deaths annually since 2017.

Philadelphia is ground zero in the state’s opioid crisis and should receive more funding. But the city ultimately went along with the settlement, figuring it was better than nothing.

The challenge now is to not waste the opportunity — or the money. For far too long, the city has allowed Kensington to devolve into an infamous drug bazaar.

That blurb above? That was in the online version of the editorial itself. It pretty much pegs the irony meter having the Editorial Board telling us about the “opioid crisis” and the Hellhole Kensington has become, and then link an OpEd which implores making illegal drug abuse safer!

As for the “infamous drug bazaar” mentioned? That’s a link to the Inky’s story about the Mexican government using videos of Kensington’s homeless and junkies in an ad campaign to scare Mexicans away from drug use!

The scene along the main business corridor is dystopian. Homeless encampments line the trash-strewn streets along with used needles, human feces, and vomit. There are scores of people smoking, drinking, sleeping, sitting, standing, and stumbling in different states of addiction.

Those unfamiliar with the jaw-dropping sight should google videos of Kensington, as words can’t capture the daily horror. It is an appalling and embarrassing blot on the city that no leader should accept.

Let’s tell the truth here: Mayor Jim Kenney has accepted it! Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has accepted it. And District Attorney Larry Krasner has accepted it. Oh, they’ll never say that, not out loud, but the fact that they haven’t actually done anything about it speaks volumes.

I don’t particularly like copying photos from the Inquirer, but the one on the right, which you can click to enlarge, illustrates the problem, and I thought that photographer José Moreno captured it well. An unidentified junkie, passed out on litter-strewn Kensington Avenue, just a few steps from the SEPTA Market Street/Frankford rail line station, by security roll-down shutters marred by graffiti, with someone trying to see if he’s just passed out or maybe dead, while the police look on. Are the police doing anything about it? Has an ambulance been called?

Another photo can be found here.

Near the end of the editorial:

Past efforts to clamp down on drug dealing and homelessness have been successful, but short-lived. In 1998, then-Police Commissioner John Timoney launched Operation Sunrise, a major effort designed to retake control of Kensington’s streets.

In 2017, the city cleared a large heroin encampment that existed for years in a gulch along the Kensington rail line. In 2021, the city cleared two homeless encampments along Kensington Avenue.

Really? The Editorial Board could reference just three major efforts in twenty-five years? Well, perhaps there were more, and the newspaper simply didn’t have all of the information, or the Board believes that more links would make poorer prose. But I did notice that after a major story in the Inquirer on August 17, 2020, there’s no referenced story about the police making a major raid that year.

The Editorial Board noted that the l;aw abiding residents in Kensington want the police to “crack down” on the open air drug markets, on the crime and the homelessness, but one particular paragraph stands out:

“If the drug dealers are not here then the drug addicts won’t be here,” Darlene Burton, a Kensington resident and community activist, told the Editorial Board. “You have to cut off the head of the snake.”

The Board let that statement stand without challenge, but let’s tell the truth: as long as there are drug addicts, there will be people willing to sell drugs to them. And that is where all of the proposals to attach the dealers fail: the city needs to crack down on the addicts as well.

The addicts need to be arrested and charged for using illegal drugs, and they need to be kept locked up at least long enough for the drugs to get out of their systems, and go through detoxification. You can’t just offer the junkies drug rehabilitation, you have to get them through detox, and force them to go through rehab, or you are just wasting your time and money. You need to convict them of crimes, so that they can, at the very least, be put on probation with frequent, mandatory drug tests.

Why haven’t Mayor Kenney, Commissioner Outlaw, and District Attorney Krasner done anything about Kensington? Because, deep down, they know that what I wrote in the previous paragraph is necessary, and none of them are willing to invest the time or money or political capital to do that. But if the city doesn’t do that, doesn’t treat not only the drug dealers but the drug addicts seriously, then the current situation in Kensington will continue. Oh, a police action of sorts could move the junkies out every so often, but without taking care of the addicts, all that can be done is push them into Fairhill, Harrowgate, or Hunting Park.

The truth ought to be obvious: you can’t be a nice guy and solve the problems. Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the anus here].

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Criminals are stupid, or “You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!”

Can we tell the truth here? Criminals are just plain stupid!

Hunter Townsend. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Lexington detective: Men got into fight with woman, returned to scene and stabbed her

by Christopher Leach | Friday the 13th, January, 2023 | 1:31 PM EST

Two suspects accused of stabbing a 28-year-old woman first assaulted the victim and later returned to the scene to further assault her, according to court testimony given by a detective Friday.

Hunter Townsend, 25, and Keith Merritt, 52, are both facing charges of first degree assault in connection to the incident, according to court records. Both were booked into the Fayette County Detention Center the evening of Jan. 5.

According to testimony from Detective Christopher Ward with the Lexington Police Department, officers were dispatched to the Dollar Tree on Versailles Road just after 3 p.m. on Jan. 3 for a report of a subject down with blood on them. When officers arrived, paramedics were administering care to a woman suffering from multiple stab wounds.

There’s more at the original.

Keith Merritt. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Allegedly, an altercation happened in the Dollar Tree parking lot, Messrs Townsend and Merritt left, and then returned later to stab the woman multiple times. In other words, they had time to think about what they were going to do, and did it anyway!

Surveillance cameras picked up the truck Mr Townsend was driving, and were able to capture the license plate number. The victim claimed that both men stabbed her, though Mr Townsend allegedly stabbed her more often.

Under KRS §508.010 Assault in the First Degree is a Class B felony. Under KRS §532.060, the sentence for a Class B felony is not less than ten (10) years nor more than twenty (20) years imprisonment. We don’t know about what the argument was, but after driving away, thinking about it, these two fine gentlemen (allegedly) returned to the scene and tried to kill her. Though not charged with attempted murder — which is another Class B felony — it’s clear that these gentlemen were (allegedly) undertaking an act which could easily have resulted in the victim’s death.

Mr Townsend is 25 years old, at which time we’d hope he was showing some maturity, but apparently not. Mr Merritt, on the other hand, is 52 years old, and ought to have developed at least some wisdom, even if only from a hard life experience, and tried to stop his younger companion.

I would not be surprised if there were some things about which we have not yet been told, or that recreational pharmaceuticals were involved, but, you know what? I really don’t care. Try them, convict them, and sentence them to the maximum term allowable under the law. Men (allegedly) this stupid are not people we want to have walking around town.

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If this isn’t #grooming, then what is it?

As we have previously noted, the Central Bucks School Board required teachers, administrators and staff to use students’ proper names, references and pronouns as recorded in school records, unless the individual student’s parents approved a change, and is removing materials with sexualized content from school libraries. Of course, the homosexual lobby are just spittle-flecked with rage, claiming that this discriminates against homosexual, bisexual, and ‘transgender’ students, as though normalizing and promoting homosexuality and ‘transgenderism’ is some sort of civil right, and not an attempt at grooming.

So now, the Biden Administration is getting into the act, wanting to advance grooming of abnormal sexual orientations. From The Washington Post:

Are book bans discrimination? Biden administration to test new legal theory.

The federal government is investigating a Texas school district over its alleged removal of books featuring LGBTQ characters

by Hannah Natanson | Friday the 13th, January 2023 | 6:00 AM EST

The federal government has opened an investigation into a Texas school district over its alleged removal of books featuring LGBTQ characters — marking the first test of a new legal argument that failing to represent students in school books can constitute discrimination.

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating the Granbury Independent School District, department spokesman Jim Bradshaw said this month. The probe is based on a complaint of discrimination lodged last summer by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said ACLU attorney Chloe Kempf. Continue reading →

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Central Bucks School District is doing the right thing

I am pretty sure that The Philadelphia Inquirer and Devontae Torriente, a student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School would approve of Central Bucks School Board’s Policy 321, on restricting “Partisan, Political, or Social Policy Advocacy Activities” if it was aimed at preventing teachers from hanging MAGA banners or wearing golf shirts with DeSantis for President on them. It goes without saying — though I’ll say it anyway — that the Inky and Mr Torriente would say that a teacher, staffer, or administrator posting Bible verses or flags or banners promoting a particular religion should not be allowed.

Central Bucks’ new policy is an ‘anti-LGBTQ crusade’

I was once a closeted queer student in high school. Everyone who believes in freedom, equality, and fairness must do all that we can to defeat these policies. Children’s lives depend on it.

by Devontae Torriente, For The Inquirer | Thursday, January 12, 2023 | 12:00 PM EST

Devontae Torriente, from his UPenn Law School biography. Click to enlarge.

As a queer person in America, I am deeply troubled by the attacks on the LGBTQ community happening across the country. The anti-LGBTQ crusade has made its way to Pennsylvania and is now on display in the Central Bucks School District — one of the largest in the state.

Since Mr Torriente self-identifies as “queer”, I trust that I am able to use the description as well?[1]Actually, I chose not to use the term.

On Tuesday, the Central Bucks school board passed Policy 321, which the board named the “Partisan, Political, or Social Policy Advocacy Activities” policy. In a 6-3 vote, the board decided to ban teachers from hanging Pride flags and other types of “advocacy.”

The policy serves to target and further marginalize LGBTQ students in the school district. Even though the proposed policy makes no explicit mention of LGBTQ status, there should be no confusion about who it targets.

I was once a closeted queer student in high school. I know firsthand the mental and emotional toll that being forced into the shadows can take. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. This is why everyone who believes in freedom, equality, and fairness must do all that we can to defeat these policies. Children’s lives depend on it.

In this, the author conflates his deciding to remain “closeted” in high school with teachers not being allowed to hang homosexual ‘pride’ flags or banners in their classrooms. He still had the choice to disclose his homosexuality, and, in the middle of the last decade that would hardly have been controversial. There might have been students who would cease associating with him, some who would mock or bully him, but that has nothing to do with Central Bucks teachers not being able to advocate for, or against, tolerance of homosexuals.

No, Mr Torriente wants the public schools to advocate for the normalization of homosexuality. But that is clearly a political position, and a position with which some people disagree.

The policy is dangerous because, as the Education Law Center argued in an October letter to the school board, the policy will have a “harmful and chilling effect” on classrooms in the school district.

An updated version of the proposal — posted last month by the Bucks County Courier Times — prohibits school district employees from advocating to students “any partisan, political, or social policy issue.” The proposal does not specify what this means, but prohibits “flag, banner, poster, sign, sticker, pin, button, insignia, paraphernalia, photograph, or other similar material” related to these partisan, political, or social policies. (The American and Pennsylvania flags are exempt.)

This ambiguity, however, is no accident; it is the point. Because it is unclear what type of speech or actions are prohibited — and because teachers’ jobs are on the line if they violate the policy — many teachers will err on the side of caution, and avoid discussing sexual orientation and gender identity altogether.

And that is exactly the way it should be! The public schools should not be discussing “sexual orientation and gender identity” at all; those are personal matters, which teachers and staff ought not to be engaging with young and impressionable students. As we have previously noted, the school board required teachers, administrators and staff to use students’ proper names, references and pronouns as recorded in school records, unless the individual student’s parents approved a change. This was done to avoid legal repercussions if a particular student wanted to claim he was the opposite sex, and his parents sued the school for ‘enabling’ gender transition.

The author takes the position — without saying it explicitly — that acceptance of “LGTBQ” status is somehow beyond the range of political or religious debate, but that is clearly wrong. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, in their various denominations, are all based on religious laws which state that homosexual activity is inherently sinful, and if not all priests, ministers, rabbis and imams of those religions are willing to go along with that, many are. Mr Torriente wants the public schools to take a position which contradicts the religious faiths of many families. That some people’s political positions, regardless of their religious faith, or lack thereof, do not accept homosexuality or transgenderism as reasonable or acceptable, is clearly and obviously known, and the author wants to use the public schools to fight that political position.

The public schools must, of course, enforce the law: students who assault or bully others over their sexual orientation are just as much in violation of school rules and state law as assault or bullying over anything else. We have seen the results of a school board which did not enforce the rules and report to law enforcement an in-school assault by Nikolas Cruz; I am absolutely in favor of serious and strict enforcement of those rules and laws. But the public schools, with their legally captive audiences, should not be in the business of pushing political or religious positions. The Central Bucks school board is doing the right thing.

References

References
↑1 Actually, I chose not to use the term.
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Killadelphia’s Democratic mayoral candidates do not want the killing to stop They must want the killings to continue, because they keep advocating the policies which have enabled more crime

When #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading journolists[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 write the news, it tends to fall into the category of GI/GO: garbage in, garbage out. It was the subtitle of this article from what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[3]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 told us that the leftward bias of the newspaper was going to force it into irrelevance.

Philly’s next mayor will inherit an unprecedented gun violence crisis. Here’s how it’s defining the race.

The Democrats running today must strike a balance that many of their predecessors did not: they must show they can fight crime while maintaining the criminal-justice reforms most of them supported.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, January 11, 2022

Crime has been a top political issue in Philadelphia for as long as anyone can remember, but few recall a time when it was quite this salient.

The subtitle, the Democratic candidates “must show they can fight crime while maintaining the criminal-justice reforms most of them supported” tells us everything: it takes on the assumption that Philly’s terrible crime rate can be fought while continuing with those “criminal justice reforms” left in place. More, it assumes that those ‘progressive’ “criminal justice reforms” did not contribute to the increase in crime.

While I have previously criticized Anna Orso’s reporting, article headlines are traditionally written not by the reporter, but by an editor. In this case, the original headline was “Philadelphia mayor’s race: how gun violence crisis is defining campaigns”, as you can see if you hover your cursor over the tab in your browser. I cannot assign the responsibility for that subtitle to her, even though she could have been the one who wrote it.

Homicides climbed to all-time highs over the last two years, and thousands more people survived shootings. Carjackings and vehicle thefts have skyrocketed, and the Police Department has hundreds of vacancies. Residents of long-neglected neighborhoods report often feeling unsafe, and many say the city feels as if it’s at a crossroads.

And nine Democrats are vying to run it.

I’ll point out the history here: Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office while President Harry Truman was still in office. Those city mayors in the chart above? All Democrats! The chance that a Republican will be elected in November is almost vanishingly small.

As the Philadelphia mayor’s race takes shape ahead of the May primary election, all the candidates agree: Public safety is the No. 1 issue. What they’ll debate now is how to lead Philadelphia out of the shootings crisis — and they’ll do so in a city that just two years ago saw a mass protest movement challenge the role of law enforcement.

It means Democrats running for the nomination must strike a balance many of their predecessors did not. They must show they can fight the urgent gun violence problem, and also tackle the long-standing societal factors that drive it. They must set the agenda for the Police Department and also the city’s antiviolence programs.

That last embedded link? It’s not just a throwaway, but leads to a previous story, one in which Miss Orso is listed as a co-author, in which the Inquirer blames the existing problems not on the rotten behavior of the current residents and gang members cliques of young men,[4]We were 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 … Continue reading but on real-estate “redlining”, community disinvestment, and poverty. There’s not a single word about children born to single mothers, about absent and frequently unknown fathers, or empty churches. Nothing was said about parents rearing children with no values or morals or ethics. In a Lord of the Flies culture among those “cliques of young men”, there isn’t a single word about children growing up with little or no parental supervision, the overarching theme of Lord of the Flies in the first place.

Former Councilmember Helen Gym, seen as the most progressive candidate in the race, centered her campaign announcement speech on public safety, saying violence is “destroying our city and our people.” She’s focused largely on expanding social programs and tailoring them to young people.

Mrs Flaherty,[5]Although Helen Gym Flaherty doesn’t have enough respect for her husband to have taken his name, at The First Street Journal we do not show similar disrespect. as Miss Orso told us, is the furthest left of the Democratic candidates, a supporter of the leftist defense attorney who is Philadelphia’s District Attorney “Let ’em Loose” Larry Krasner, and has supported both significant ‘decarceration,’ turning more criminals loose, and ‘defunding the police.’ That the ‘social programs’ she favors have done no good in the literally decades that Philadelphia individually, and the country as a whole, have been applying them, is not a question Miss Orso raised.

Joseph P. McLaughlin, an adviser to two former mayors, said he’d recommend a mayoral candidate running in 2023 avoid being dismissive of law enforcement and work to separate themselves from the “defund the police” movement. The slogan that refers to diverting law enforcement funding to social services was adopted by racial justice protesters in 2020, and local officials across the country — mostly Democrats — backed versions of the idea.

“Whatever you think of the particular policy,” McLaughlin said, “the headline on it was a disaster for Democrats.”

It has arguably been a ‘disaster for Democrats’ in competitive elections, but once a Democratic nominee is selected, it no longer matters, not in Philadelphia; if the Republicans nominated Jesus, and Satan was running as the Democrat, Satan would win in the City of Brotherly Love, and it wouldn’t even be close.

Still, tough-on-crime rhetoric or strategies that call for increasing funding to the Police Department may not sit well with the city’s growing and well-organized progressive movement, which has notched notable electoral wins over the last five years, including elevating District Attorney Larry Krasner to office.

“The message of ‘more police are going to solve this, more prisons will solve this’ is out of touch,” said Robert Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center. “Philadelphia has a very strong movement that is opposed to that and is not going to accept any kind of talk like that from these candidates.”

The Abolitionist Law Center, huh? They very honestly tell you what they are about, which is “abolishing class and race based mass incarceration”. As many criminals as Mr Krasner has sprung from prison — and shooting and homicides have both risen dramatically as the incarcerated population have dropped — many of whom have wound up committing new crimes, you would think that if ‘decarceration’ worked to reduce crime, crime would have come down.

I began this article by slamming Miss Orso, but in a way, it really wasn’t fair: she was reporting on the political positioning of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor, and it wasn’t really her job to point out that their common problem would be that their proposed policies are all terrible.

In the meantime, there was this:

16-year-old boy killed in North Philadelphia shooting

The killing on West Erie Avenue in North Philadelphia on Wednesday could have connections to a non-fatal shooting of another 16-year-old boy two days earlier, police said.

by Jason Laughlin | Wednesday, January 11, 2023 | 7:32 PM EST

A 16-year-old boy was shot to death in North Philadelphia Wednesday night, and police said the shooting could have ties to another shooting of a teenager in the neighborhood just two days earlier.

The 16-year-old, whom the Philadelphia Police Department did not identify, was found shot multiple times in an empty lot on the 1400 block of West Erie Avenue about 5:25 p.m. Wednesday. He was taken to Temple University Hospital and pronounced dead there about a half hour later.

Shell casings gathered at the scene suggested at least 11 shots were fired just half a block from Broad Street and Erie Avenue, a bustling commercial intersection in North Philadelphia. When the shots fired people scattered, said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small, and the teenager, already shot, ran to the vacant lot where he collapsed. It was unclear how many shooters were involved, Scott said.

Police are investigating whether the killing Wednesday is related to a shooting nearby Monday night, Small said. In that shooting, another 16-year-old male was shot in the leg at 15th Street and Erie Avenue. He survived. That victim and the teenager killed Wednesday appeared to have known each other, Small said. Both lived in that neighborhood, he said.

There’s more at the original, but one thing is clear: decarceration, anti-violence initiatives, and social programs won’t do anything, not as long as 16-year-olds are out running in gangs “street groups”, and won’t mean a thing if parents aren’t rearing their children properly. It takes two parents to bring up children properly, a mother and a father, and it takes parents with a strong moral, ethical, and yes, religious foundation.

And there is one more thing. All of the Democrat politicians in Philly are fully supportive of abortion. But what is abortion other than teaching children that other children are disposable? Was the probably teenaged shooter who slew the 16-year-old really doing anything different from the pregnant women ‘terminating’ their pregnancies in the city’s abortion clinics? The shooter was just engaged in a sixteen-years-late abortion. As we see the supporters of prenatal infanticide telling us that abortion is a good thing, helping women to avoid a disruption in their lives, helping them to maintain their chosen career paths, don’t think that the children in Philly don’t see that as well, don’t get the message that a child can be simply gotten rid of because he might happen to be inconvenient.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑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 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.
↑4 We were 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“. Even after the widespread mockery the Inquirer has received over this, they were still avoiding the word “gang” in preference for “street groups” and “groups.”
↑5 Although Helen Gym Flaherty doesn’t have enough respect for her husband to have taken his name, at The First Street Journal we do not show similar disrespect.
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Killadelphia: Lies, damned lies, and statistics! Even The Philadelphia Inquirer couldn't ignore these killings!

We have previously mentioned the questionable nature of Philadelphia’s homicide statistics. Following Ben Mannes report, the website Broad + Liberty has now undertaken to keep and report the numbers themselves, using data from several sources, including inside information:

With Philadelphia’s homicide total surpassing the 500 mark for two consecutive years, and with questions swirling about how the city tracks and tabulates that statistic, Broad + Liberty has launched an independent tracker to list homicides (what the city police call M-jobs) as well as special case/suspicious deaths (S-Jobs) in the city.

On any given day, the number of items (rows) entered in the tracker may not correlate precisely to the number of homicides in the city, which is, in part, why our outlet has embarked on this project.

In order to hold the city accountable for accurately reporting criminal deaths in the city, Broad + Liberty is also tracking cases that have traditionally been excluded from the Philadelphia Police website, which includes vehicular and suspicious deaths, in an effort to ensure that they are regularly and properly reconciled to Philadelphia’s own published homicide tally in the year that they occurred.

By carefully tracking each homicide, found body, and suspicious death, we hope to either provide greater confidence in Philadelphia’s published tally, or we hope to expose and correct flaws and to help give a voice to concerned citizens, victims, and survivors throughout our city.

One of the most important columns in the tracker is “Source of Information” which will transparently show you if the information was received directly from Philadelphia Police, or from some other source.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Broad + Liberty’s homicide tracker is higher than the city’s. The very first homicide listed, of a 31-year-old black male in the 3000 block of Clifford Street is not listed in the city’s shooting victims database, even though the wounding of a second person in the incident is listed. We reported on this earlier.

Triple homicide leaves three dead, one injured in Northeast Philadelphia

Officials said they believed the shooting was a targeted attack.

by Rob Tornoe and Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, January 10, 2023 | 11:13 AM EST

Three young people are dead and a fourth is in critical condition after a shooting Monday night in Northeast Philadelphia, police said.

The shooting occurred near the intersection of Rowland Avenue and Guilford Street in the Mayfair Monday night around 10 p.m., Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters.

Actually, Rowland Avenue and Guilford Street do not intersect; Guilford Street has a roughly 45º intersection with Crabtree Street, which intersects with Rowland Avenue a short way down.

Two of the bodies were found near 50 spent shell casings at the intersection, Small said. A third victim was rushed to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital but later died, and a fourth person who was shot was hospitalized in critical condition.

The three men who died were ages 18, 19, and 24, police said. The fourth man, who was listed in critical condition as of Tuesday morning, is 28 years old, they said.

According to the city’s shooting victims database, which records only three victims, not four, and only two fatally shot, not three, as of 12:22 PM EST on Tuesday, January 10th, the victims were all Hispanic white males; what I have often 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. doesn’t want to tell you that part. As of this writing, the 18-year-old victim does not appear on the database.

As of the Inky’s report, the police believe that the four males were deliberately targeted, all knew each other, and were physically together. “Near” fifty spent shell casings makes it sound like a targeted drive-by, or perhaps a hidden ambush, but the police have no motive as of yet.

This is not a dilapidated rowhouse area, but one of neat and spacious duplexes. While Zillow does not show any homes currently for sale on Guilford Street, nearby properties such as this one are listed above $250,000. The Mayfair area is not considered part of the Philadelphia Badlands.

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 are pro-choice on exactly one thing It's just that Our Betters know better than you how to run your life

The Food Network’s Molly Yeh, the only TV cook I’ve seen who uses an electric range. Click to enlarge.

It was just yesterday that we noted how the global warming climate change emergency activists want to require new homes being built, and older homes to be retrofitted, with electric heat, primarily heat pump HVAC — heating, ventilation, and air conditioning — systems. That the power might fail in the middle of winter, well, that never seemed to be a serious concern to them, even though with home electricity being primarily delivered via overhead wires, our electric utilities are the ones most vulnerable to weather-related and other damage.

We have also previously noted that it “seems that almost everybody prefers a gas range,” even though the climate activists don’t want people to have that choice.

Well, now the Biden Administration is taking a different tack, not pushing global warming climate change emergency reasons, but your kids’ health. From the New York Post:

Biden administration weighs nationwide ban on gas stoves: report

By Mark Moore | Monday, January 9, 2023 | 4:39 PM EST | Updated: Tuesday, January 10, 2023 | 8:40 AM EST

Millions of Americans may soon be entering “not stove season.”

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me. Click to enlarge.

The Biden administration is considering a nationwide ban on gas stoves — citing the harmful pollutants released by the appliances, according to a report.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is mulling the action after recent studies showed emissions from the devices can cause health and respiratory problems, Bloomberg reported Monday.

“This is a hidden hazard,” CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told the outlet. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Reports by groups including the American Chemical Society and New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity found gas stoves — which are used in about 40% of US homes while the remainder use various forms of electric cookers — emit pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, ca​rbon monoxide and fine matter at levels deemed unsafe by the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization.

The studies also linked gas stoves to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer​ and other health conditions.​

There’s more at the original, and, unlike so many newspapers, the Post’s stories are not hidden behind a paywall. And yeah, I’m proud of my craftsmanship, so I’m willing to use yet another excuse to show off the kitchen I remodeled. 🙂

But there’s more. Here’s a bit more detail from the linked Bloomberg article:

Natural gas stoves, which are used in about 40% of homes in the US, emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter at levels the EPA and World Health Organization have said are unsafe and linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer, and other health conditions, according to reports by groups such as the Institute for Policy Integrity and the American Chemical Society. Consumer Reports, in October, urged consumers planning to buy a new range to consider going electric after tests conducted by the group found high levels of nitrogen oxide gases from gas stoves.

Further down:

The Bethesda, Maryland-based Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has a staff of roughly 500, plans to open public comment on hazards posed by gas stoves later this winter. Besides barring the manufacture or import of gas stoves, options include setting standards on emissions from the appliances, Trumka said.

Lawmakers have weighed in, asking the commission to consider requiring warning labels, range hoods and performance standards. In a letter to the agency in December, lawmakers including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Don Beyer of Virginia, both Democrats, urged action and called gas-stove emissions a “cumulative burden” on Black, Latino and low-income households that disproportionately experience air pollution.

Well, of course the Distinguished Gentleman from New Jersey is going to find a racial angle in all of this!

If you don’t have an electric range, and want to install one, you’ll need a special circuit and receptacle for an electric range. Normally this will require a NEMA-14 receptacle, and a 240-volt, 30-amphere circuit. Do you have the knowledge, tools, and skills to install such a circuit? You do? Great! You don’t? Open your wallet again, and call an electrician.

As always, there’s more. As I noted in yesterday’s article, during our remodel we installed not just a propane — there’s no natural gas service out in the boondocks — range, but a propane water heater and propane fireplace. That fireplace has really helped, when the weather gets brutally cold and the heat pump that is our primary heating source couldn’t quite keep up, and when the electricity has gone out before. Propane fireplaces are as clean burning as an electric range top, and do not require a flue, but if the logic of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is held valid by federal regulators for gas ranges, then the same logic would apply to gas fireplaces.

And remember: the Environmental Protection Agency has already put in new regulations for wood stoves. The federal government have absolutely no reservations about imposing regulations on people’s homes.

I am not naïve enough to think that the calls of the global warming climate change emergency activists have had no impact on how the Consumer Product Safety Commission does its business; claims that this is just for our health will be magnified by claims that banning gas ranges is an environmental necessity. But the American people prefer gas ranges; that’s why you see even the wealthy, very blue state New Englanders installing gas ranges during home remodels on This Old House.

The Patricians have absolutely no problem telling the plebeians how to live their lives. If it was only a matter of them telling us what we should do, that would be an exercise in their freedom of speech. But the problem is that the Patricians in government want to exercise governmental power, and force people to do as they say, and that must be resisted, that must be fought.