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Bidenflation The American working class are primarily Republican voters, so you can't expect the Biden Administration to consider them, can you?

I was wryly amused to see these two editorial links together on the front page of The Wall Street Journal’s website front page Wednesday morning. As President Joe Biden wants desperately to reduce inflation, with the midterm elections just 55 days away, it demonstrates the lack of thought the Administration has put into its policies.

Another Inflation Jolt for Markets

Investors get a reality check about prices and Fed tightening.

By The Editorial Board | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 | 6:54 PM EDT

Biden Administration officials have been claiming so confidently that inflation is under control and falling that investors may have believed it. Bad idea. Tuesday’s report on the consumer-price index for August showed inflation has remained high and sticky, and markets promptly fell out of bed.

And we mean from the top bunk. The 3.94% tumble in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was the worst day since 2020, and the declines in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were worse. Investors apparently had believed the hopeful chatter that inflation was headed downward, and that the Federal Reserve wouldn’t need to raise interest rates so high as to court a recession. Investing lesson of the week: Never trust a politician.

Consumer prices overall rose 0.1% in August, after being flat in July. But the decline was almost entirely the result of falling energy prices. Gasoline fell 10.6% and fuel oil 5.9% in the month. That was a happy respite from the spring when gasoline prices averaged more than $5 a gallon nationwide, but prices at the pump are still up 25.6% in the last 12 months and still average $3.71 a gallon.

The larger problem is that the energy declines weren’t enough to offset price increases across nearly everything else. The 12-month inflation rate in August fell only to 8.3%, down from July’s 8.5%, but higher than the 8% to 8.1% that economists had expected.

Then there’s this, from Washington Post economics reporter and Editorial Board member Heather Long:

Hmmm: “Inflation has been eating up wage gains since April 2021 and shows little sign of significant easing.” People are getting poorer in real terms, and that has been the case really since Joe Biden became President.

Then there was this:

Biden Freezes Oil and Gas Leases

Calling Joe Manchin: Interior uses ‘sue and settle’ to suspend Trump-era approvals.

By The Editorial Board | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 | 6:53 PM EDT

Joe Manchin’s deal with Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer isn’t looking so good for the West Virginian, and the latest evidence is a Biden Administration settlement with green groups that stops previously approved oil and gas leases.

The Interior Department last week agreed to conduct additional climate reviews for five federal oil and gas lease sales held in 2019 and 2020 that were challenged by environmental groups. Activists claimed the Trump Administration didn’t sufficiently study the climate impact of the leases under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Rather than defend the earlier environmental reviews, the Biden Administration surrendered to their progressive friends. According to last week’s legal settlement, the climate reviews will incorporate the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions that could result from the leases. This takes into account indirect global costs of emissions such as property damage from natural disasters, risk of conflict over resources, reduced agricultural productivity from drought, and more.

By including the social cost in the NEPA reviews, the Administration will be able to claim the leases have a significant negative environmental impact even when they don’t and then seek to cancel them. Alternatively, the Administration could try to force oil and gas producers to mitigate their emissions by helping fund its climate agenda.

While the settlement doesn’t outright cancel the leases, it will effectively freeze their development. Interior has agreed not to approve new drilling permits or rights-of-way on the leases until it completes the climate reviews. Even after those reviews are done and if Interior allows development, green groups will still be able to challenge the reviews and leases afresh in court.

There’s more at the original. The Wall Street Journal has a serious paywall, but even if you’re not a subscriber, you can get a couple of free articles a month.

The Biden Administration wants to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the use of fossil fuels to do so, but freezing oil and gas extraction leases won’t do anything about that. It simply means that more oil-and-gas production will come from overseas, and less from the United States, which means more of United States’ workers money will be going to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela rather than staying at home. Even if you don’t like those evil oil corporations, it means that there will be fewer American oil company workers, workers who earn what the Biden Administration likes to call “good, union wages,” will have jobs while more men overseas will be drawing paychecks from American dollars.

All of this makes American workers poorer. The American oil rig worker who makes big bucks per hour, but is getting no hours isn’t helping his family, and isn’t helping our economy. The oilfield worker who is unemployed because the Biden Administration is throwing obstacles into American production isn’t spending money at Dunkin’ Donuts for a coffee and bagel on the work in the morning, is buying fewer clothes because his work clothes aren’t getting worn out as fast, and his lack of work affects a lot of other people downstream.

The economic measure I find most important is actually a simple one, the velocity of money. The velocity of money is the frequency at which one unit of currency is used to purchase domestically- produced goods and services within a given time period. In other words, it is the number of times one dollar is spent to buy goods and services per unit of time. The lower the velocity of money, the less positive impact a dollar has on the economy. If the gasoline you buy is extracted in Kuwait, it may cost the same amount as if it had been extracted in Texas, but the dollars spent on Kuwaiti wages disappear from our economy while the dollars spent on Texas workers stay here. The more gasoline and diesel fuel we produce in the United States, the faster he velocity of money in the United States, and the more benefits and wealth accrue to American workers and their families.

There is another part not being considered in all of this. If we assume that we can move away from an energy economy based on petroleum, as the climate change activists want, and we can power our homes and cars and economy on ‘renewable,’ non-polluting energy, the more petroleum we buy from overseas because we are producing less here during that transition, then the more of the value our natural resources we have just wasted, left in the ground with no value. We will be making ourselves poorer during the transition.

Of course, the Biden Administration’s climate change activists can’t see that part, because they never think things through, and never really consider the economic impact on American workers in their plans. But hey, the American working class are primarily conservative, primarily Republican voters, so you can’t expect the Democrats to consider them, can you?

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Killington Have Lexington's leadership been taking lessons from Philadelphia's mayor, chief prosecutor and top cop?

In 2019, Lexington set a new homicide record, with 30 for the year. In 2020, the city topped that with 34, and in 2021, set a new record with 37. Well, surprise, surprise, 2022 has already seen the 2019 and 2020 records topped, and is rapidly closing in on last year’s numbers.

1 person dies after shooting near downtown Lexington, according to coroner’s office

by Christopher Leach | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 | 8:37 AM EDT

Lexington police are investigating an overnight shooting that left one man dead, according to the Fayette County Coroner’s Office.

Police said the shooting happened shortly before 9:30 p.m. in the 500 block of West Sixth Street, which is near Coolavin Park. One victim suffered a gunshot wound and was transported to a hospital.

Police didn’t provide a description of the victim’s injuries. But shortly after 8 a.m., the coroner’s office announced the man died at the hospital. The victim was 22-year-old Doricky Harris, according to the coroner.

Further down:

This marks the 35th killing in Lexington of 2022, inching the city closer to the annual homicide record of 37 set last year. There have been six homicides in the last month.

In 2021, the 35th murder of the year didn’t occur until December 7th, 86 days later than this most recent killing. If the murder rate remains constant through the end of the year, one murder every 7.2857 days, Lexington is on schedule to see 50 — the math works out to 50.098 — homicides this year.

Boy, Mayor Linda Gorton, Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn, and Police Chief Lawrence Weathers sure are doing a bang-up job in protecting the people of Fayette County! Have they been taking lessons from Philadelphia’s mayor, chief prosecutor and top cop?

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Killadelphia: With “leadership” like this, no wonder Philadelphia is in crisis!

The George Soros-sponsored, police-hating defense lawyer who got elected as Philadelphia’s chief prosecutor, tells us just what is wrong with the City of Brotherly Love:

Larry Krasner’s tweets continued to say:

Our office will continue to hold juveniles appropriately accountable while ensuring that they receive the resources and attention necessary to steer them in the right direction.

and:

I also want to emphasize the importance of violence prevention funding, which is necessary to truly achieve justice & avoid incidents like this from occurring. @philadao is now accepting applications through @PhilaFound for community-based violence prevention group microgrants.

So, what was this “fair and just outcome” about which Mr Krasner spoke?

Juvenile Adjudicated for Attempted Murder on SEPTA Platform

September 12, 2022

PHILADELPHIA (September 12, 2022) — Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced on Monday the adjudication of a 14-year-old male in juvenile court who was charged with Attempted Murder, Aggravated Assault, and multiple firearm charges for a non-fatal shooting that occurred on the afternoon of July 12, 2022 on a crowded SEPTA platform located at 15th and Market Streets beneath City Hall.The incident began when the juvenile defendant engaged in a verbal altercation with the victim after the defendant exited a train car. The defendant alleged that the victim spoke expletives and asked him if he wanted to “take it upstairs.” The defendant subsequently shot the 19-year-old male three times at point blank range with a 9mm handgun less than 20 seconds later, claiming that the victim had started to pull a firearm from his waistband and that the shots were fired in self-defense. The victim sustained wounds in the hand, chest, and abdomen and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. The crime gun was never recovered.

SEPTA surveillance cameras captured the entire incident on video and played a critical role in helping police identify and apprehend the shooter. Station footage also helped convince the judge that the defendant’s self-defense claim lacked merit, as the victim declined to cooperate with Philadelphia police and the District Attorney’s Office.“I’m grateful to Assistant District Attorney James Quinn of the DAO’s Juvenile Unit for achieving a fair and just outcome in this case,” said DA Krasner. “Our office will continue to hold juveniles appropriately accountable while ensuring that they receive the resources and attention necessary to steer them in the right direction. I also want to emphasize the importance of robust violence prevention funding, which is necessary to truly achieve justice and avoid dangerous incidents like this from ever occurring in the first place. My office is now accepting applications through the Philadelphia Foundation for community-based violence prevention group microgrants.”

“I’m proud to have prosecuted this case,” said ADA James Quinn. “I’m also grateful to all of the SEPTA police officers, particularly SEPTA Officer Aaron Kinchey, who responded immediately to secure the scene and in all likelihood saved the life of this 19-year-old victim. I also want to thank Philadelphia Police Department Detective Michael Rocks for his excellent work in this investigation.’The DAO has resumed our Violence Prevention Grant Program. Local, community-based nonprofits interested in applying must email GrantmakingServices@philafound.org.

That’s the entirety of the press release, but did you notice the one thing you don’t see in either Mr Krasner’s tweets or the District Attorney’s Office statement? Though both state that such juvenile criminals will be held “appropriately accountable,” there is exactly zero mention of what the young criminal’s actual punishment was.

Of course, we can read between the lines of the press release. That “the victim declined to cooperate with Philadelphia police and the District Attorney’s Office” tells all we need to know: this was a 14-year-old gang-banger who blasted away at a 19-year-old gang-banger, and the ‘victim,’ the 19-year-old wasn’t going to cooperate to get the 14-year-old locked up, because the ‘victim’s’ gang will mete out their own street justice to the 14-year-old.

“The crime gun was never recovered.” That means it’s still out on the street, most probably with the shooter’s gang, and now the 14-year-old has established his ‘street cred,’ that he’s a bad MF.

Attempted murder is a first-degree felony in the Keystone State, the sentence for which, under Chapter 11: §1103(1) a term fixed by the court for not more than twenty years in prison. If the crime is aggravated assault, which may be either a first- or second-degree, under the same section, the sentence can be 10 to 20 years if in the first-degree, or 5 to 10 years if second-degree.

While the ‘victim’ might not have cooperated, the entire crime was caught on tape! The District Attorney’s Office did not need the cooperation of the ‘victim’ to convict this ‘juvenile’ and send him to prison for twenty years, to get him off the streets for a long, long time.

So, what did happen to the 14-year-old wannabe gang-banger? Was he sentenced to a term in juvie? Was he released to his parents, possibly with an ankle bracelet? Did he perhaps get a really strong talking-to by Mr Krasner? Whatever it was, we know one thing: he’ll be out on the streets soon enough, doubtlessly with another, or perhaps even the same, 9mm in his waistband, and next time it might not be yet another banger he shoots, next time it might be an innocent bystander like Tiffany Fletcher, caught in the crossfire.

Of course, it’s also true that the ‘victim’ or his buddies will administer that street justice, and the 14-year-old never sees 18.

Then there was Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia)

The Mayor, who loves to blame everybody but himself, wants to blame the Republicans who control the state legislature. But what Pennsylvania law states is that no subordinate governmental unit may impose firearms control restrictions stronger than those under state law. Thus, while there might be a couple of tiny tweaks in there, the City of Brotherly Love is under the same firearms laws as the rest of the Commonwealth.

I lived in Jim Thorpe for 15 years, and during those 15 years we had two murders in Carbon County, one in 2004 and another in 2006. If there was another one, I never heard of it, and I did search through the data, which is, regrettably, by township and borough in the county, and found only the two mentioned. And, as I recall, neither involved a firearm!

So, if the problem is the Commonwealth’s firearms control laws, why are the homicide rates so very, very different in Philly?

I previously wrote that in 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

It got worse last year: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders.

And this year? Philadelphia is ahead of the pace of killings in 2021’s record-setting year. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, September 12th, 386 people have spilled out their life’s blood in the city’s mean streets, an average of 1.5137 per day, which works out to a projected 552.51 killings in Philly for the year, if that rate remains constant. Last year, it didn’t, with a real spike in murders after Labor Day, to a rate of 1.7155 for the rest of the year. Will that happen again in 2022?

Well, who can know? But we do know one thing: the city’s elected leadership will not take responsibility for what the city has become. Mayor Kenney is term-limited; he cannot run for re-election. Mr Krasner, on the other hand, can run for District Attorney as many times as he wants, and after two landslide victories, both promising and having a record of avoiding putting people in jail, it seems difficult to believe that that isn’t exactly what a substantial majority of the voters want. He’d rather let drug dealers and gang-bangers go free, and apparently so do his constituents.

Her Majesty the Queen died a few days ago, after more than 70 years on the throne, but she was still Princess Elizabeth, the heir apparent to His Majesty King George VI when Philadelphia’s last Republican mayor left office. Seventy years of unbroken Democratic policies have transformed the city on the Schuylkill into what it is today, our nation’s poorest and most internally segregated city of over a million people, as well as its deadliest.

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What happens when you leave dirty dishes in the sink for 70 years?

On August 17, 2020, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a long story about the open air drug markets clustered around the infamous Kensington and East Allegheny Streets intersection, and the SEPTA station there. The newspaper even published a photo, by staff photographer Tim Tai, showing what appears to be a junkie shooting up right in front of the Allegheny Street Station on the Market Street-Frankford line. I asked, What are Mayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw doing about open air drug markets in Philly?

The answer, apparently, is nothing.

A triple shooting happened outside this Philly elementary school. But for Kensington families, the risk of violence is constant.

“We don’t play in the parks, ever,” said Jasmine Albury, a mother of five. “There are shootings everywhere.”

by Kristen A. Graham and Ellie Rushing

Jasmine Albury doesn’t like to linger on Philadelphia’s streets. She and her five kids are an “in-and-out family,” she says — they leave the house only for the things they need.

“We don’t play in the parks, ever,” said Albury, who lives in North Philadelphia. “There are shootings everywhere.”

When three people last week were shot outside Willard Elementary — the Kensington school where her son is a fourth grader — Albury felt despair, she said, but certainly not shock. For many Philadelphia families, the city’s gun violence crisis means constant risk and trauma exposure in daily tasks as simple as getting children to and from school.

No part of the city is as plagued by gun violence as Kensington, largely fueled by an open-air drug market and higher rates of poverty. Law enforcement officials have said that dealers sell heroin, crack, and other drugs on more than 80 blocks in the neighborhood.

Willard is just one-quarter of a mile from the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny, the longtime hub of the area’s drug trade. A previous Inquirer analysis found that within a five-minute walk of this intersection, more than 300 people have been shot since 2015, a rate that, per square mile, is 11 times higher than the city as a whole. At this intersection and into the surrounding blocks, there are sprawling homeless encampments. People in addiction openly use drugs, and fall over into the street. There is trash and suffering as far as the eye can see.

The Philadelphia Police Department know where all of this stuff is, and know what’s going on, but won’t actually do anything about it.

Mr Finberg replied:

Good question, they’re rentals and I’m a long term owner. The rent doesn’t have to be very high to cover the mortgage and I’m keeping costs as low as possible. It’s not the most profitable thing I’ve done in my life that’s for sure.

I suppose “the rent doesn’t have to be very high” is a relative thing: the rowhouse at 835 East Hilton Street is listed for rent at $1,100 a month, and, as you can see from the map, it’s just a couple of short blocks from the Allegheny Street SEPTA station.

Full disclosure: I do not know if the listed house is one of Mr Finburg’s rental units.

The inside looks decent: neat and clean, with everything freshly painted, a new, builders’ grade kitchen, and new, though (shudder!) laminate, floors. 🙂

The link for the exterior picture is from Google Maps, and Google Maps indicates that the photos of East Hilton Street were taken in August of 2021, more than a year ago. The interior photos do not show the window air conditioner hanging out of the living room window that we see in Google Maps.

I know nothing about Mr Finberg. He may be a really great guy, or he may be the way so many people view landlords, as Snidely Whiplash tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks. Most probably, he’s very much in the middle of those extremes, a man trying to make some money, but one who has also been willing to put his own money at risk to bring better housing to a sadly depressed area.

But until the city of Philadelphia does more, does a lot more, to clean up the entire area, there will be no real improvements for the people. Drug use is not just some victimless crime; drug use affects other people, and the decent people of Kensington are examples of just how much it does affect other people; the entire neighborhood has been destroyed, become part of the Philadelphia Badlands. That nickname did not arise out of nowhere; it came to be because Kensington and Fairhill and Strawberry Mansion and Hunting Park have been ravaged by criminal activity, criminal activity largely driven by drug dealers and junkies.

There’s the natural urge to say, well, heck, just legalize drugs and this won’t be a problem. But, as the Inquirer article cited noted:

People in addiction openly use drugs, and fall over into the street. There is trash and suffering as far as the eye can see.

One thing is obvious: Commissioner Danielle Outlaw’s Philadelphia Police, and Federal Marshals, need to make a huge sweep through Kensington, and arrest every last one of the bad guys, and the United States Attorney needs to prosecute all of those cases to the maximum extent of the law. Allowing those cases to become part of state law would mean that District Attorney Larry Krasner, who hates locking up people, or even putting them on a serious probation, would just let the arrested back on the streets.

Perhaps the Commissioner has done so little regarding the well-known open air drug markets because she understands that Mr Krasner wouldn’t prosecute seriously anyone her officers rounded up. Perhaps she figures that anyone arrested and actually taken off the streets would simply be replaced by the next ‘generation’ of bad guys, but so what? Arrest them, too! And the next ‘generation’, and the next.

If you allow dirty dishes to pile up in the kitchen around the sink, what happens? You get ants and roaches and mice and fruit flies crawling and flying around your kitchen, you get unpleasant odors wafting through the air, and eventually everything gets soiled around those dishes, around your kitchen. Well, the City of Brotherly Love, in its 70th consecutive year of one-party Democratic rule, has left the dirty dishes in the sink of Kensington, left them to rot and fester, and everybody is shocked, shocked! that the whole kitchen, and much of the house, have become dirty, smelly and dilapidated. It would have taken a lot less effort to just wash the dishes the day they were soiled, but no, now the problem is huge and nasty.

But if the city does not clean up now, then when?

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Killadelphia

It really wasn’t an unsafe prediction. I wrote, at 10:53 AM on Saturday morning, “There were nine total paragraphs about (Tiffany) Fletcher in (Robert) Moran’s story, and I would not be surprised if there’s another about her later today in the newspaper.” And here it is:

Two Philadelphians in two days were shot and killed just going about their routine

One of the dead was a mother of three, shot while sweeping outside the Mill Creek Recreation Center, where she worked. The other was believed to be a husband and father carrying home groceries.

by Kasturi Pananjady, Robert Moran, and Stephanie Farr | Saturday, September 10, 2022

Tiffany Fletcher (center, yellow tank top) was photographed with lifeguard Robin Borlandoe (left) and assistant recreation leader Charles McKnight (top) at the Mill Creek Recreation Center pool in West Philadelphia on Aug. 14.
Elizabeth Robertson | Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

On the job at a recreation center. Out getting groceries. Everyday activities turned fatal for two Philadelphians who lost their lives in senseless shootings on back-to-back days this past week.

Tiffany Fletcher was killed by a stray bullet Friday afternoon while working for the city at the Mill Creek Recreation Center, in the 4700 block of Brown Street in West Philadelphia, police said. The 41-year-old mother of three was sweeping outside the center when a gun battle erupted and she was struck in the stomach, police said.

She was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead Friday evening.

When I opened the story, at around 10:10 PM EDT, all it said was that the story was “published an hour ago,” because The Philadelphia Inquirer somehow sees that as new wave, or cool, or edgy. Why not just tell us the time?

The Inky included a photo of Miss Fletcher, and some tributes to her, but there wasn’t actually a lot more information about her.

Rather, the story started to tell us about another Philadelphian gunned down for seemingly no reason:

On Thursday night in Overbrook, police said that a man identified on social media as Quenzell Bradley, or Quenzell Bradley Brown, described as being in his mid-30s, was shot in the head multiple times just before 9 p.m. on the 6200 block of Lebanon Avenue, where he was believed to have lived. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Those who knew him said in an Instagram post that he was carrying groceries home to his wife and kids at the time. Police provided no motive for the killing.

While police had not released the man’s name as of late Saturday, saying they had not yet notified his next of kin, relatives appear to be posting about his shooting on a Facebook page belonging to “Quenzell Bradleybrown.” A flier was posted on the page Saturday afternoon, identifying him as Quenzell Bradley Brown, aka “QQQQ.”

A Friday post on the Facebook page read: “… let it be known my brother was a innocent man was not n the streets was a family man married man with four kids just started his new job ln and was bringing in groceries unfortunately he was gunned down before he could even make it to the steps of his home died over senseless gun violence that had nothing to do with him mistaken identity I love you quenzell n we won’t rest until u get JUSTICE NO JUSTICE NO PEACE.”

A vigil will be held at 6 p.m. Sunday for the victim at 1101 N. 63rd St., according to a flier on the Facebook page. Attendees are encouraged to bring blue balloons in his honor.

Once again, we get to hear about the “innocents” who get killed in the City of Brotherly Love, but there are never any stories about the vast majority of people murdered in Philly. The police and the media tally up the numbers — at least 380 through mid-afternoon on Saturday — but, in the end, that’s all they are: numbers.

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Another dead in the Philadelphia Badlands Will The Philadelphia Inquirer actually tell us who he was, and why he was killed?

I’ve said it dozens of times before:  The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an ‘innocent,’ someone already of some note, or a cute little white girl.

Well, an “innocent” was killed on Friday, so yeah, we’re getting a lot more about her from what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer:[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.

Parks and Recreation worker killed by stray bullet in West Philadelphia

Tiffany Fletcher was sweeping outside a recreation center when she was caught in the middle of a gun battle, police said.

by Robert Moran | Friday, September 9, 2022

A 41-year-old woman was killed by a stray bullet Friday afternoon while working for the city at a recreation center in the Mill Creek section of West Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 1:30 p.m., the woman — identifed late Friday night by the city as Tiffany Fletcher — was sweeping outside the Mill Creek Recreation Center on the 4700 block of Brown Street when a gun battle erupted and she was struck in the stomach, police said.

She was rushed by police to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead Friday evening.

Police Capt. John Walker said a 14-year-old boy — who allegedly was seen dropping a gun near the shooting scene — was in custody as part of the investigation. The gun was recovered by police.

Mayor Jim Kenney and Parks and Recreation Kathryn Ott Lovell issued statements praising Fletcher and decrying the gun violence.

Perhaps Mr Kenney shouldn’t have linked the city’s Parks and Recreation Twitter site, because, at least as of 8:30 AM EDT on Saturday, all it has are nice, positive tweets showing, and nothing on Miss Fletcher.

For Inquirer reporter Robert Moran, the 482 words in his story constitutes a long one. A reporter who covers “breaking news at night,” his stories are very frequently of the three or four paragraph variety, noting that the Philadelphia Police Department have reported an unknown male was shot and killed in one of the neighborhoods in the city’s combat zones. This time, he had more to work with, because the victim was an innocent, not just another gang-banger or wannabe.

There were nine total paragraphs about Miss Fletcher in Mr Moran’s story, and I would not be surprised if there’s another about her later today in the newspaper. Much further down, I saw this:

Later Friday night in the city’s Fairhill section, an unidentified man was fatally wounded in a shooting on the 3100 block of North Front Street. He was transported by private vehicle to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:34 p.m. Police reported no arrests in that case.

On Friday, December 11, 2020, columnist Helen Ubiñas published an article in the Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Since Miss Ubiñas published her column, the Inky has changed its editorial policies, and now readers will no longer be told that the victim was “a 21-year-old black male,” but just a 21-year-old male.” And in Mr Moran’s story, this victim was reduced to even less than Miss Ubiñas wrote, to “an unidentified man”, though Mr Moran normally adds more information if he’d has it.

The Fairhill neighborhood is one of those listed prominently as part of the “Philadelphia Badlands.” Of course, once the Google Maps designation of “Philadelphia Badlands” was spotted, the Inky waxed wroth:

‘Philadelphia Badlands’ label on Google Maps latest controversy over neighborhood names

A Twitter user who spotted the name called it problematic: “to see Google kind of endorse that really did not strike me the right way.”

Philadelphia Badlands. Photo via Philadelphia Inquirer Click to enlarge.

by Patricia Madej | Updated: May 2, 2019A label for the “Philadelphia Badlands” on Google Maps drew ire online this week, adding another layer to the long-standing conversation over neighborhood names and boundaries, and their uses in technology.

A Twitter account, @RITTSQU, shared an image Tuesday that showed the name labeled near the Fairhill neighborhood in North Philadelphia, calling it “a racist new twist.” The post quickly garnered attention, and by Thursday, the name did not appear to be on the map, though a search for “Philadelphia Badlands” still brought results.

Using “Philadelphia Badlands” in Google Maps’ directions feature will take users to Sixth Street and Allegheny Avenue, while also suggesting Fairhill, North Philadelphia, and Kensington. It’s unclear how long the name had existed on Google Maps, when or why it was removed, or how it was added. Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Note that North Front Street is shown on that Google Maps photo of the Badlands. The 3100 block extends for three blocks south of East Allegheny Avenue, also shown on the map. You don’t get any more Badlands than that!

I’m not sure why calling a murderous neighborhood the Badlands is racist; it’s a designation spawned by the numbers, not color.

West Philly, where Miss Fletcher was killed, is not in the Badlands, but, if we do something really radical like tell the truth, West Philly has its own serious crime problem.

There’s a question not often asked these days: was Miss Fletcher’s life somehow more important than the unknown man killed on North Front Street? Being where the shooting happened, there’s a decent chance he was another gang banger, killed by a banger from a rival gang, but we don’t know that; he could easily have been a completely innocent man, perhaps an intended robbery victim, or could he have been someone’s boyfriend shot by a jealous, spurned suitor? Perhaps he was a buyer in a drug deal gone bad.

This is the problem with the 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 of the Inquirer: they don’t do very much actual journalism when it comes to city homicides. We get to read the stories about the innocents and the cute white girls killed, but most of the homicide stories are simply not pursued.

This is really the job of the Inquirer, our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, because the other important news medium in Philly, the television news stations, are in the business of presenting stories which happen right away, stories which have a strong visual component. Only newspapers have the capacity to dig more deeply, to present more information than people can get from a thirty-second story on WPVI-TV; that’s just the nature of the different media forms. And with the switch to a mostly digital format, newspapers are no longer stuck with assigned story length, save in the actual print editions.

Who was the unidentified 21-year-old man killed in Fairhill? Why was he killed? What family were left to mourn his passing? The Inky may, may! delve into the story of the 14-year-old (alleged) shooter in the Mill Creek Rec Center gun battle, perhaps telling us about the other (alleged) members of the gangs which fought it out, though that story might just be too politically incorrect for publication.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Is justice a matter of color in Lexington? Part 2

We have previously noted the apparent discrepancies in the sentences that Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has sought for felons, discrepancies obvious when you look at the race of the offenders. Nathaniel Harper, who is white, was sentenced to 36 years in prison for killing a man he hit as he wrecked the car in which he was fleeing police, even though his attorneys had been trying to plead down to a manslaughter or another lesser offense. Miss Red Corn and her office allowed George Boulder IV, who was part of a deliberate, broad-daylight shooting which killed members of another gang, or Xavier Hardin, who deliberately shot an enemy in Fayette Mall, or Jemel Barber, who was allowed to plead down for one of two fatal shootings, or Malachi Jackson, who killed a 15-year-old rival, or James Ragland, who killed a woman outside a Lexington strip club, every single one of them, along with others, to plead down to manslaughter, for deliberately killing other people.

Now comes this one:

Lexington man gets 35 years after pleading guilty to murder in 19-year-old’s death

by Taylor Six | Thursday, September 8, 2022 | 2:19 PM EDT

Morgan Johnson, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

A Lexington man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to murder for a teenager’s death in 2018.Morgan Johnson, 25, was sentenced on Thursday afternoon by Judge Lucy VanMeter for amended charges he pleaded guilty to as part of a deal in July. Johnson pleaded guilty to murder, second-degree burglary and first-degree unlawful imprisonment.

Johnson’s conviction comes after he was accused of killing 19-year-old Christopher Spencer at an apartment off Richmond Road Feb. 7, 2018. Spencer was found on the porch of the residence with multiple gunshot wounds.

Johnson, who was 21 at the time, is also accused of kidnapping a woman he knew and taking her to the Squires Woods Way home, where he sexually assaulted her, according to court records. Johnson, Spencer and the woman knew one another, former Lexington Police Sgt. Jervis Middleton said, according to court documents.

He was sentenced to 25 years for murder, five years for burglary and five years for unlawful imprisonment. Each sentence will run consecutively. He was also ordered to have a 10 year protection order against one of the victims in the case, and a restitution of $6,080.

There’s more here.

Mr Johnson’s attorney noted that there had been questions as to whether he was mentally fit to stand trial, and he had been examined at Eastern State Hospital, though Taylor Six’s article notes that the mental hospital does not release any information on individual patients. None of that, of course, excuses Mr Johnson’s crimes. But my question is: why was Mr Johnson, who did plead guilty, not given treatment as lenient as Miss Red Corn has been “mediating” out to black murderers?

Oh, wait, I’m sorry, black manslaughterers, the charges to which they were allowed to plead down.

I have no problem at all with Mr Johnson’s sentence, other than it is too short; he should get out of jail on the same day that Mr Spencer comes back to life. My point is that the thankfully outgoing Commonwealth’s Attorney has been allowing very lenient plea bargain arrangements to killers who aren’t white. If you deliberately kill someone, there should be no plea bargains: you should go to jail for the rest of your life.

But that’s not what happens in Lexington, not if you’re black:

  • On January 10, 2022, James Edward Ragland II, 31, was sentenced to ten years in the state penitentiary for shooting and killing Iesha Edwards, 27, outside what the Lexington Herald-Leader euphemistically called a “gentleman’s club.” Originally charged with murder, Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn allowed Mr Edwards to plead down to manslaughter.
  • On January 19, 2022, Malachi Jackson, now 20 but 16 at the time of his crime, charged with the murder of 15-year-old Kevin Olmeda, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter, second-degree assault, and first-degree criminal attempt to commit robbery. With a recommended sentence of 15 years by the prosecution, time already served taken into account, and the state minimum of 85% of sentence required, Mr Jackson could be out of jail by the age of 31.
  • On February 11, 2022, Jemel Barber, 23, was sentenced to twenty years for the killing of 40-year-old Tyrece Clark. Mr Barber was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter and second-degree robbery, down from murder, by Miss Red Corn, and if he serves his full sentence, including time already served, he could be out by age 39.
  • On March 11, 2022, Xavier Hardin, 21, was allowed by Miss Red Corn to plead guilty to manslaughter, assault and wanton endangerment charges in the killing of Kenneth Bottoms Jr., 17, and charges of murder were dropped. The shooting was caught on security tape in Fayette Mall, so it isn’t as though the prosecution would have a difficult time proving their case. Mr Hardin was eventually sentenced to 22 years in prison, but even if he serves the maximum sentence, he’ll be out when he’s just 41-years-old.

This is not justice, and this is not law enforcement. Thankfully, Miss Red Corn is leaving office in a few weeks, but we need to do what we can to push her successor to enforce the law, to the maximum extent of the law. Not doing so is why Lexington has already seen 34 homicides this year, one every 7.38 days, and is on pace for 49 or 50 murders for the year; the exact number works out to 49.44. The city’s record is ‘only’ 37 murders, set last year.

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!

Lexington is drawing ever nearer to it’s record number of homicides.

Lexington set a record with 30 homicides in 2019. Not to be outdone, the gang-bangers knocked off 34 people in 2020. Well, it seems like the bad guys took only 34 as a personal challenge, and slew 37 people last year. Now, with 3½ months left in the year, 2022 has seen 34 homicides as of September 9th. Last year, murder number 34 didn’t occur until Thanksgiving Day.

Steven Smith, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

1 man found dead after a Lexington shooting. Suspect arrested, charged with murder

by Christopher Leach | Friday, September 9, 2022 | 7:06 AM EDT

One man is dead and another has been arrested after a shooting on Devonia Avenue Thursday, Lexington police say.

The shooting took place just before 6 p.m. on the 100 block of Devonia Avenue, which is near North Broadway. Police said they were responding to a report of a disorder with a weapon and when they arrived, they found a 57-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound. He was declared dead on scene.

The Fayette County Coroner’s Office later identified the victim as Clarence Adams.

Police arrested Steven Smith, 32, and charged him with murder, fourth degree assault (domestic violence), two counts of wanton endangerment and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. He is being held at the Fayette County Detention Center without a bond.

During the investigation, detectives determined that Smith and Adams lived at the same residence. The assault charge stemmed from an assault of a third party, according to police.

The killing marks the 34th homicide in Lexington this year, putting the city closer to the annual homicide record of 37, which was set in 2021.

No, of course what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal didn’t publish the suspect’s mugshot; I looked it up on the Fayette County Detention Center’s website, where it is a public record. Also shown was a previous mugshot, dated May 6, 2015, so Mr Smith is not exactly unfamiliar with jail.

The jail website lists the charges Mr Smith is alleged to have committed. Two separate counts of possession of weapons by a convicted felon tells you that he has been a bad, bad boy.

Let’s look at those charges:

  • KRS §508.030 Assault 4th Degree is a Class A misdemeanor.
  • KRS §508.060 Wanton Endangerment, First Degree, a Class D felony
  • KRS §527.040 Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon is a Class D felony if it is not a handgun, and a Class C felony for a handgun.

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, and the sentence for a Class D felony is not less than one (1) year nor more than five (5) years imprisonment. Under KRS §532.090, the sentence for a Class A misdemeanor is imprisonment for a term not to exceed twelve (12) months.

Then there’s the big charge:

  • KRS §507.020, murder is a capital offense. Under KRS §532.030, the sentence for a capital offense is either:
    • death
    • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole
    • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until he has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence
    • imprisonment for a term of not less than twenty (20) years nor more than fifty (50) years

As we have previously noted, Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn is retiring at the end of this month, so she won’t be able to “mediate” Mr Smith into a lenient plea deal, but if her hand-picked replacement is nominated by Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY), Mr Smith might well be the grateful recipient of leniency.

Mr Smith, if he is convicted, should get out of jail the same day that his victims comes back to life.

At 34 homicides in 251 days, Lexington is on pace for 49.44 murders for 2022.

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Oh, the poor dears! Homosexual males are whining that they can’t go to their orgies because of monkeypox! Now they're blaming the government for the loss of their sexual freedom

I seem to remember a time, not so long ago, when the left were telling us that it was not just right, but mandatory, that people alter their desired behavior because a horrible virus was loose. Now some are demanding, demanding! that the government enable their ability to do exactly as they please, without any health consequences. From NBC News:

How monkeypox spoiled gay men’s plans for an invincible summer

Queer men across the U.S. talked to NBC News about the dates they never went on, the sex they never had and the gatherings they avoided due to the viral outbreak.

by Benjamin Ryan | Friday, September 2, 2022 | 9:04 AM EDT

For many gay and bisexual men, the sprawling and chaotic monkeypox outbreak has upended a summer that was supposed to be a well-earned opportunity — following the peak of the Covid crisis — to finally have some fun and revel with their gay brothers without the threat of viral infection hanging over them.

Soon after Memorial Day, however, these men, as well as transgender individuals and other queer people — GBTQ for short, because lesbians’ monkeypox risk is remote — were met head-on with harrowing reports about monkeypox’s often devastating and disfiguring effects on the body. Next came anger and frustration over what queer activists characterize as the Biden administration’s fumbling initial response to the outbreak.

I guess that it’s OK now to call queers queer. After all, they seem to have embraced the term for themselves. It’s not how I choose to express myself, but whatever.

Lost amid the frantic media and public health reports about monkeypox epidemiology, the delayed vaccine deliveries and the squabbling over how best to communicate about the virus are the millions of GBTQ people whose happiness, well-being and connection to one another have in many cases been considerably compromised by the mere threat of monkeypox infection.

“Life has sort of halted,” said Guillermo Rojas, 29, a Mexican citizen and public administration graduate student in New York City. “This was supposed to be the great summer that everything went back and opened.”

Dr. Alex Keuroghlian, a psychiatrist at the LGBTQ-health-focused Fenway Institute in Boston, said the outbreak has “been extremely distressing for community members and is also triggering in that it harkens back to the early days of the AIDS epidemic. It has a chilling effect on people’s sense of community, cohesion and belonging.”

Let’s be truthful here: in the NBC article, “people’s sense of community, cohesion and belonging” means their ability to go out and seek anonymous, promiscuous sex.

The article continues to note that monkeypox, while quite painful, has been fatal in only one instance in the United States, in an already “severely immunocompromised person”, which would be extremely politically incorrect to read as a homosexual male who had AIDS. The vaccine is becoming much more readily available.

One very politically correct notion, that monkeypox is spread by skin-to-skin contact, is disabused, as the article cites a study which points out that Sex between men, not skin contact, is fueling monkeypox, new research suggests: The claim that skin-to-skin contact during sex between men, not intercourse itself, drives most monkeypox transmission is likely backward, a growing group of experts say.

Now, however, an expanding cadre of experts has come to believe that sex between men itself — both anal as well as oral intercourse — is likely the main driver of global monkeypox transmission. The skin contact that comes with sex, these experts say, is probably much less of a risk factor.

In recent weeks, a growing body of scientific evidence — including a trio of studies published in peer-reviewed journals, as well as reports from national, regional and global health authorities — has suggested that experts may have framed monkeypox’s typical transmission route precisely backward.

How horribly, horribly! politically incorrect!

Back to the first cited article:

Over 100 gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people responded to an NBC News online survey seeking to learn about how monkeypox has affected their lives. What this diverse cross-section of the community most had in common were missed opportunities. They wrote about sex they never had, dates they never went on and gatherings with friends they avoided.

This was really the most important part of the 2,684-word long article, because it set the stage for the rest of it, and the rest of it was basically whining that so many homosexual males felt it unsafe to go to bathhouses and bars cruising for mostly anonymous sex. COVID-19 put a real crimp in that starting in 2020, and once the panicdemic — not a typo, but a word reflecting the fact that the worst symptom of the disease was panic — was over, and the license for promiscuous, anonymous sex was restored, it all got shut down again.

“Post-Covid,” said (Guillermo Rojas, 29, a Mexican citizen and public administration graduate student in New York City), recalling how he experienced the free-spirited bacchanalia into which monkeypox arrived in New York City this spring, “everybody went crazy, and there were sex parties all over town.”

Monkeypox swiftly pushed the contemporary safer-sex playbook out the window. Queer people have been left scrambling for answers about how to protect themselves and have expressed bewilderment as they’ve struggled to process mixed messaging from public health leaders and journalists about what poses a substantial risk of infection.

Rojas was one of the first U.S. residents to receive the prized monkeypox vaccine, in late June. But even with the benefit of his first jab of the two-dose vaccine, he has still sharply curtailed what he had hoped would be a long-awaited libertine summer.

“I’ve stopped going to sex parties,” he said, given that public health authorities identified such gatherings of men as major monkeypox risk factors. “I also stopped having sex with people who live off their OnlyFans. I additionally stopped cruising at the gym, I did not continue to go to Fire Island, and I stopped attending orgies.”

To misquote Dirty Harry, I’m just all broken up about Mr Rojas’ ability to go out to orgies.

Not everyone in the queer community has been on the same page regarding monkeypox precautions. Just as battles over mask mandates and school closures have turned neighbor against neighbor during the Covid pandemic, fierce internecine conflicts have arisen among GBTQ people this summer about the best ways to respond to and communicate about monkeypox.

Michael Weinstein, the president of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, dusted off his outspoken antipathy toward PrEP and published a scathing rebuke of the sexual liberties the HIV-prevention pill has facilitated in an op-ed titled “Monkeypox Reckoning” in the Los Angeles Blade on Monday. Notorious for an unapologetically strident, moralizing and fear-based approach to HIV-prevention communication, one that is far out of step with that of the vast majority of the public health community, Weinstein decried “a wholesale abandonment of safer sex promotion in favor of PrEP.”

“There has always been a sex radical group that has defined gay liberation as absolute sexual freedom,” Weinstein wrote, blaming monkeypox on (the loss of) those freedoms.

Let’s see, a disease spread primarily by sex, and some people see a highly promiscuous sex life as more probable to spread the disease? That’s pretty much logic, you know?

John Pachankis, a psychologist at the Yale School of Public Health, noted how for the past two decades, queer advocacy organizations have pushed “a narrative that gay people are just like everyone else” in a successful effort to secure many civil rights protections. He spoke to the conflict that members of this community now face when the particulars of gay sex lie at the heart of the monkeypox outbreak and, as during the AIDS crisis, have become fodder for intense public debate.

“In the context of the real threat of those rights’ being taken away,” Pachankis said, referring to the recent rising tide of anti-LGBTQ sentiment and policies in the U.S., “the last thing that you want to do is disconfirm that narrative — even if the picture is a little more nuanced, even if gay people do live distinct lives from straight people, even if they express their sexuality more creatively, some might say more authentically.”

Brian Minalga, 36, who is gender nonbinary and works in the HIV field in Seattle, said: “There’s this idea that there are good people with good behaviors having the good type of sex. It’s moralistic and puritanical.”

It’s also practical.

Every human society of which we know has developed the concept of marriage, of restricting sexual activity to husbands and wives, and gradually eliminated legal polygamy, because that was what worked best for society. But let’s tell the truth here: the sexual drive for men is heavily skewed toward f(ornicating) anyone in a skirt, and it has always been the reluctance of women, who bear the far greater burden in reproduction, which has held men back.

But when the prospective copulation is between two men males? That restraining force just isn’t there, and that’s why homosexual males have such a promiscuous culture. If homosexual males were really like the propaganda put forward to normalize homosexuality, just people seeking only loving, coupled relationships, who deserve the benefits and stability of marriage, the tremendous spread of monkeypox wouldn’t have occurred.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and various state and local health departments have reported that monkeypox is indeed already disproportionately affecting Blacks and Latinos. And yet outsize shares of the vaccines have tended to go to whites — thanks, health advocates say, to structural factors that favor access to more privileged members of society.

Watching such patterns play out “is painful,” said Carlos E. Rodríguez-Díaz, an associate professor at the Milken Institute School of  Public Health at George Washington University, “because it’s a reminder of the presence of systemic racism.”

This is utter bovine feces. Government at all levels have been trying to get the monkeypox vaccine to minority communities, but social stigma against homosexuality in black and Hispanic neighborhoods have contributed to greater reluctance to get the vaccine:

(Jazmyn Henderson, an activist with ACT UP, an HIV and AIDS advocacy group), a trans Black woman, said Black men who have sex with men may still identify as heterosexual. “Identifying as gay, identifying as trans, all of that is very stigmatized,” she said. “I didn’t realize how stigmatized trans women are until I became one.”

Just as with COVID-19, the black community have been more resistant to taking the vaccine. The left have given us all sorts of reasons for this, most involving distrust of government, but whatever the reasons, the reluctance to take the COVID vaccines existed, and they were part of the community, whether the left wanted to blame that on racism or not. With monkeypox, that reluctance is a baseline, and the added stigma over homosexuality in the black community layers on top of that.

Simply put, the vaccine against monkeypox exists, and has existed for a long time; it’s not experimental the way the COVID vaccines were. There were some initial shortages, but those are being rapidly resolved, and if black homosexual males have been more reluctant to take the vaccine, that’s on them. The wryly amusing part is the view of the view of the left that black males and white males have exactly the same social concerns and should think exactly the same way.

There’s a lot more at the original, with much of the rest telling us how specific individuals have curtailed their promiscuity over fears of monkeypox. But, alas! sexual promiscuity has been curtailed in society because it has real, identifiable, and sometimes serious consequences.

A former friend of mine was fond of saying that the sexual revolution is over, and the men won. Well, in a lot of ways, that’s true. But it’s also true that the men lost, and when you get two, or more, males together interested in sex with each other, sometimes that will result in negative consequences for them. The homosexual activists want the government to subsidize and protect their right to screw indiscriminately, but once everyone is vaccinated against monkeypox, something else will come along.