Would anyone have expected anything different from Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong? She knows that she has to condemn the riots, but she tries to understand the rioters and looters, and wants to say that she can’t really blame them. Continue reading
Tag Archives: #Culture
The natural result of black anger at a white police officer having charges against him dropped is to destroy black community businesses!
This really isn’t much of a surprise, because when the #BlackLivesMatter marchers rioted through 2020’s Summer of Hate, they mostly burned stuff in heavily black neighborhoods. Continue reading
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend
The Soviet Union was one of the worst things ever foisted on human beings, but when it came to World War II, the United States and United Kingdom saw the Communists as being less of a threat than Nazi Germany. Thus, in order to defeat Adolf Hitler and Germany, we sent all sorts of military aid to Josef Stalin and the USSR to defeat the Nazis.
And it worked! Though Americans frequently don’t understand this, the greater part of the defeat of Germany came from the land power advance of the Soviets, a thousand-mile march which cost Germany entire armies. British and American bombing helped to reduce Germany’s warmaking industries, but the real defeat of the Nazis came from soldiers of the Allies, primarily the Soviets, killing soldiers of Germany.
Of course, many Americans were shocked, shocked! that Comrade Stalin was not a good and noble Democrat after the war, and that the Soviets imposed their communist system on the eastern European nations they ‘liberated’ from the Third Reich. I’d note here New York Times sycophantic reporter Walter Duranty and his glowing reports about the Communists in the 1930s.
The Soviets following World War II are probably the greatest reminder that the phrase “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is pure bovine feces. The enemy of your enemy may at times be a useful ally, but that’s about it.
A Pride flag ban sparks accusations of betrayal in tiny Michigan city
By Allan Lengel | Saturday, September 16, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. — This city of 28,000 was once so Polish it was dubbed “Little Warsaw.” But in recent decades, an influx of immigrants gave Hamtramck new character. Bengali and Arabic joined English on signs at City Hall. Yemeni and Bangladeshi mosques, restaurants and shops proliferated.
And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.
Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.
Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBTQ+ community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.
“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stackpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
There’s more at the original.
As I have written previously, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev once said that the capitalists would sell the communists the rope by which the communists would hang them; in today’s left, “LGBT” groups support the Islamic groups which would, were they living under Islamic rule, throw them in jail, at the very least.
Today’s American and European left really, really hate Israel, as the Jewish state defends itself against the Muslim Arabs who have sworn to push the Jews into the sea. The left see the plight of the poor, poor Palestinians as an oppressed people, nobly fighting for their freedom, but it’s all delusional thinking. Israel is the only functioning democracy on the Middle East. Human rights? The left almost unanimously support homosexual and transgender rights, but try being homosexual in the Muslim-ruled nations: if you get caught, Da’ish will throw you to your death off a tall building, Iran will hang you, and other Islamic countries have their own punishments. Ten countries, all majority Muslim, can and sometimes have imposed the death penalty for consensual same-sex sexual acts.
Why, then, did the liberals in Hamtramck believe that the Muslims in their small town would be their allies back once they had helped them gain political power? “We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?” Catrina Stackpoole whined. Had she been a bit more self-aware, she might have asked, “and this is how you repay us, by throwing us off a rooftop?”
As much as they’d never admit it, there’s a distinctly American bias in the thinking of the left. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated:
Under international human rights law, religion is not a legitimate justification for egregiously violating fundamental rights of individuals. As explained by the HRCttee in General Comment 22, the existence of a state or majority religion cannot result in the impairment of the rights of individuals under the ICCPR. General Comment 22 also explains that “the concept of morals derives from many social, philosophical, and religious traditions; consequently limitations … for the purpose of protecting morals must be based on principles not deriving exclusively from a single tradition.”
A great and noble statement of Western classical liberal values. Now, who here believes that this means diddly to Muslim and Arabic immigrants of the last twenty years?
The good progressives of Hamtramck were apparently unable to comprehend that the Arabic and Muslim immigrants had their own culture, and their beliefs and cultures did not get left behind in the Old Country.
The Muslim immigrants into Hamtramck saw the good, kind progressives of their city as just what they were: useful idiots.
Killadelphia: How does a 12-year-old boy go missing for over a week, and nobody noticed?
Body of 12-year-old boy, shot in the back of the head, discovered in the trash, after a Philadelphia Housing Authority worker had already collected the garbage bin and taken it to another PHA facility. The boy’s body fell out during the process.
The body of a 12-year-old boy was found in a dumpster in West Philadelphia, police say
Hezekiah Bernard, 12, was found dead in West Philadelphia last week.
by Ellie Rushing and Chris Palmer | Thursday, August 31, 2023 | 11:32 AM EDT | Updated: 3:54 PM EDT
The body found in a dumpster in West Philadelphia last week has been identified as a 12-year-old boy, police said Thursday.
Police had said they recovered the body of a young man on the morning of Aug. 23 inside a trash can at a public housing complex at 55th and Cherry Streets.Hezekiah Bernard
But for nearly a week, they did not know who he was — or that he was a child.
On Tuesday, he was identified as Hezekiah Bernard, according to Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, head of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit.
Surprisingly enough, The Philadelphia Inquirer printed young Mr Bernard’s photo.
Bernard’s death has been ruled a homicide. He was shot once in the back of the head and his body was wrapped in plastic, said Ransom. It was not yet known when he was killed, or how long he had been in the dumpster before police recovered his body.
Really? Wouldn’t the police have a good guess due to the missing person report?
Ransom said Bernard had not been reported missing in recent weeks.
So, a 12-year-old boy goes missing, for over a week, and it wasn’t reported?
Who were his parents? Who was the adult responsible for young Mr Bernard?
An autopsy was conducted, but investigators weren’t able to figure out who the victim was, Ransom said. Detectives distributed fliers in West Philadelphia, and on Aug. 29, Bernard’s relatives reached out to the Medical Examiner’s Office and were able to confirm that Bernard was the victim.
“Relatives” may not have been the people actually responsible for the child’s care, so we can’t automatically blame them. But shouldn’t someone have noticed that he was missing? Yeah, my mind is good at speculating what could have happened, but there are too many possibilities, none of them good.
Killadelphia: We knew all along whom the Usual Suspects would blame!
500 block of North Creighton Street, via Google Maps. Click to enlarge.
We have previously noted the shooting in the 500 block of North Creighton Street in West Philadelphia. A semi-dilapidated neighborhood with a few rowhouses boarded up, it’s wholly unsurprising that City Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier would blame it not on bad guys or street gangs, but “massive blight and disinvestment.”
Police identified the 19-year-old man who was fatally shot at a West Philly block party
Kevin July, 19, was fatally shot early Saturday on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, police said. Another eight people were wounded in the incident at a late-night outdoor party.
by Chris Palmer and Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, August 21, 2023
Philadelphia Police on Monday identified the man who was fatally shot at what officials are now calling an unpermitted block party over the weekend as 19-year-old Kevin July, saying he was one of nine people shot in the violent episode in West Philadelphia’s Mill Creek section. The eight other victims survived, police said.
Still, authorities have released few other new details about the crime as they continue to investigate, saying they were not yet sure of a motive, nor were they even certain how many people opened fire during the incident.
July’s relatives declined to comment when contacted by phone Monday.
The shooting happened on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, police said, when shooters fired at least 60 shots into a crowd of dozens of people who had gathered for a party or barbecue. The celebration took place at end of the rowhouse-lined street that dead ends in between Wyalusing and Westminster Avenues.
The article noted that the block party had not applied for or received a permit for such, and that permitted block parties must end at 8:30 PM. Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore told the media that shell casings from at least three different types of ammunition had been recovered, and that means only one thing: gangs!
Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the area, said in an interview that she’d spoken to the captain of the 16th Police District and been told that the event was a private gathering that had attracted guests from elsewhere, and that some people who live on the block “didn’t even know people who engaged in the dispute.” . . . .
She also said Mill Creek, the neighborhood in which the shooting occurred, is burdened by “massive blight and disinvestment,” including city-owned properties that have grown dilapidated. And she said the city should focus on investing in housing, clearing vacant lots, and improving the nearby recreation center as ways to improve conditions that can lead to violence.
“The chronic disinvestment experienced in neighborhoods like West Mill Creek lends to the thought that nobody cares here, anything goes here,” she said.
Would you invest in an area like that? If I were going to invest my money in something, it would be something which showed an at least plausible return on investment. West Mill Creek is not a place in which that plausible return on investment exists.
I grew up poor, too, reared by a divorced mother, alone, with two younger sisters, but somehow, some way, I did get involved with street gangs, and I never shot anyone. Poverty is no excuse!
Killadelphia: Just because 60 bullets flew doesn’t mean it was gang related!
Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Chris Palmer’s last paragraph contained an element of truth that Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would like for you not to realize:
More than 1,100 people have been shot in the city as of Wednesday, according to police statistics, and 245 of those victims have died. The pace of gunfire was about 23% lower than last year, the statistics show, but still much higher than the years before 2020, when gun violence began hitting record heights.
The impetus for Mr Palmer’s story? Yet another gang-banger shooting in West Philadelphia!
Seven people were shot, one fatally, during possible shoot-out at West Philly block party, police say
Several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on the 500 block of North Creighton Street around 1:30 a.m., police said.
by Chris Palmer | Saturday, August 19, 2023 | 12:42 PM EDT
Seven people were shot, one fatally, when several gunmen sprayed at least 60 bullets through a crowd on a West Philadelphia street early Saturday morning, according to police.
The shooting happened about 1:30 a.m. on the 500 block of North Creighton Street, said Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 51, he said.
The 500 block of North Creighton Street is a poor, mostly black, rowhouse street, but, as we have reported previously, the good people of West Philadelphia don’t want public projects to make the area nicer, because that might cause more white people to move there.
Some witnesses described the shooting as a “shoot-out” at a block party or barbecue on the rowhouse street, said Vanore, though he added that detectives were in the early stages of gathering information and evidence.
A woman who lives on the block said in an interview that at least 100 people had been outside for a birthday party before gunfire erupted. . . . .
“It was a nice party — they were dancing, drinking, having fun, and then these knuckleheads [opened fire],” said the woman, who declined to give her name due to fear of retribution.
One of the victims, a 19-year-old man, was pronounced dead early Saturday, said Vanore. He declined to identify the man pending family notification.
Creighton Avenue PPD report, via Steve Keeley.
There’s a truth that the Inky simply won’t report. The deceased was “shot several times to the face”, which tells you all that you really need to know: this was a deliberately targeted gang hit. We were, of course, reliably informed by The Philadelphia Inquirer that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, so we must replace the term “gang-bangers” with “cliques of young men” or “clique beefers”. District Attorney Larry Krasner and his office seem to prefer the term “rival street groups,” something that the newspaper has now come to use as well. I suppose that the word “gang” is now racist somehow, as though there cannot be any white gangs out there.
Californie ain’t the place you wanna be! "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein
After Jed Clampett struck oil when he missed a shot at some game he wanted for the dinner table, and became an instant millionaire, his kinfolk said that he needed to get away from the hillbilly life, and that “Californie is the place you wanna be, so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly.”
Hills, that is. Swimming pools, movie stars.
Well, these days, perhaps Californie ain’t the place you wanna be. Ballot Proposition 47, which passed 4,238,156 (59.61%) to 2,871,943 (40.39%) on November 4, 2014, reduced several (purportedly) non-violent offenses from felonies to misdemeanors:
- Shoplifting, where the value of property stolen does not exceed $950
- Grand theft, where the value of the stolen property does not exceed $950
- Receiving stolen property, where the value of the property does not exceed $950
- Forgery, where the value of forged check, bond or bill does not exceed $950
- Fraud, where the value of the fraudulent check, draft or order does not exceed $950
- Writing a bad check, where the value of the check does not exceed $950
- Personal use of most illegal drugs (Below a certain threshold of weight)
Robert Stacy McCain has been calling California a kleptocracy for some time now, but, of course, he’s just another evil Right Wing Extremist, so his views don’t matter.
It has been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, something certainly not entirely true, as I have not been mugged; whether Mr McCain has been, I do not know. But what happens when reporters for the liberal Cable News Network get robbed?
CNN reporter burglarized a third time while covering rampant crime in the Bay Area
Kyung Lah warns tourists visiting San Francisco and Oakland, ‘do not leave a single thing in your car’
By Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News | Wednesday, August 2, 2023 | 9:00 PM EDT
A CNN crew has been burglarized a third time while covering the rampant crime in the Bay Area of California.
CNN correspondent Kyung Lah took to Twitter on Wednesday and shared video of her crew’s car with a completely-shattered window.
“I’m #Oakland, shooting a story about crime. Got broken into again— but this time our car was completely empty. We were across the street— this happened in seconds,” Lah wrote. “Even tho the car is empty, the thieves break in and lower the seat so they can steal anything in the trunk. Our trunk was empty. If you come to San Francisco or Oakland, do not leave a single thing in your car. Ours was thankfully empty.”
The CNN reporter continued:
If you’re here keeping track, this is the 3rd time my CNN rented car has been broken into in the Bay Area in the last year. But I’ve finally learned to not leave even a candy bar in the car anymore (still doesn’t stop the car break in but at least we don’t lose anything)
“(A)t least we don’t lose anything,” she wrote, but, then again, it wasn’t really her car, was it?
At the rental car return lot, the employee tells us of the 250 cars returned yesterday, 27 had been broken into, just more than 10% of cars returned
Just how long will the rental car agency be able to stay in business if 10.8% of the vehicles it rents out come back damaged like that? The agency’s insurance rates will have to increase, along with the repair costs within the deductible, and that means the price to rent a car will get jacked up. At what point do businessmen simply say, “This [insert slang term for feces here] just isn’t worth it”?
Fox News had a story on Miss Lah’s previous encounter with crime.
We previously wrote, At some point, you’d think that even the most liberal of the liberals would realize that without some semblance of law and order, you no longer have civilization! Yes, after fifteen good years in the Keystone State before I retired, I tend to concentrate on crime, mostly violent crime, in Philadelphia.
Carjackers beat a man to death in Northern Liberties, police say
The incident occurred late Thursday night, according to police, when two men pulled a 60-year-old from his vehicle and beat him before fleeing the scene in his car.
by Beatrice Forman | Friday, August 18, 2023
A pair of carjackers assaulted a man before fleeing the scene and taking his vehicle, leaving him for dead in Northern Liberties Thursday night, Philadelphia police say.
The incident occurred just before 10 p.m. on Third and Cambridge Streets, when two masked men pulled up on what a witness told police was a dirt bike. Then, the pair pulled a 60-year-old man from the driver’s seat of a parked 2023 Toyota Highlander, according to the witness account that police relayed to reporters.
That would be a “small, frail, thin, lightweight” 60-year-old Asian man, according to the Philadelphia Police. They sure proved how manly they are!
An altercation ensued before one of the masked men took off in the Highlander and the other took off in the on the dirt bike, according to police.
When officers arrived on the scene, they found the 60-year-old laying in the street as witnesses attempted to render aid.
“He was bleeding from the head. He was semi-conscious,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters. “He was unable to stand up.”
The victim was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, but was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Officers tracked the location of the Highlander to Camden, where it was recovered unoccupied by Camden police. The dirt bike was last seen traveling north on Third toward Girard Avenue Thursday night.
So, whatever the thugs had planned — and remember: they didn’t know that the victim they beat had died — they simply dumped the car they stole on the far side of the Ben Franklin Bridge, and at least one of them was back in Philly, and while Northern Liberties isn’t that bad an area, heading north on Third takes you to some not so great parts of town. But the innocent man they beat lost his life over what turned out to be a joyride for the thugs, and the odds are pretty good that the carjackers, the killers, were teenagers, and juveniles.
Beatrice Forman, the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, cannot always choose the stories she is assigned; news comes in, and has to be written up. She is, after all, a “general assignments reporter.” But when I read her bio at the bottom of her article, where it said that she “enjoys covering Philly-specific tomfoolery,” I had to wonder how she felt about this specific bit of tomfoolery, because, the way it ended, at least on the part of the killers, was little more than tomfoolery as far as they were concerned.
We have previously noted Oakland/Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, yet another one of the ‘progressive’ civil rights defense lawyers funded by George Soros, like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, who are softer-than-Charmin on crime. These idiots good people believe that they are somehow doing something good and noble by keeping oh-so-misunderstood young men out of jail, but what they have created, and what the Pyrite State’s Proposition 47 has enabled, a situation in which crime has few consequences, a situation in which crime has been enabled, and the ‘tomfoolery’ of a joyride into Camden has left an innocent man stone-cold graveyard dead.
Civilization requires civility, and civilization requires law and order, to keep the people living in it safe. Perhaps CNN correspondent Kyung Lah didn’t really feel the full effects of the car break-ins while she was reporting on crime in the Bay Area, because, after all, it wasn’t her car. But other people are feeling it, the rental car agency which has to repair the vehicle her producer and she rented, and the extra costs which that imposes on the agency, and eventually, its next customers. The people of Ward 8 in the District of Columbia are feeling the effects of crime, as the only grocery supermarket there is at least looking at closing its doors due to rampant shoplifting, and the store’s employees might feel the effects of crime as they could lose their jobs if the store closes. Michael Salerno’s family are feeling the effects, as he was murdered during a carjacking attempt, allegedly by a 15-year-old. “The latest serial carjacker had all of his cases dismissed in juvenile court and slaughtered a 19yo while on ankle monitor GPS.”
I would like to believe that Miss Price and Mr Krasner and the rest of the ‘progressive’ prosecutors are genuinely good people, who actually believe that what they are doing will reduce crime and create a better society, rather than just evil, because good people can eventually learn from their mistakes, from the consequences of their actions and policies. I would like to believe that ‘progressives’ in general are seeing the consequences of the policies they support, and at least considering whether conservatives have been right all along, and that crime needs to be punished, and punished harshly. I would like to believe that good people could see that excusing lesser crimes, crimes which could put the malefactors in jail for five years, does the bad guys no favors, when, instead of being able to look forward to being released in a few years, they have been enabled to commit crimes which could get them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.
Sadly, if that is going to happen, it hasn’t happened yet, as the good, white liberals who live in Society Hill and University City voted for the Larry Krasner-supporting Helen Gym Flaherty, because crime hasn’t come to their doorsteps yet. Perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Lah and her staff have learned the hard lesson the easy way, and might at least consider voting for conservatives, rather than the same old, same old who have enabled America’s large cities to turn into crime-ridden [insert slang term for feces here]holes. California is run almost completely by liberal Democrats, and Philly hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Harry Truman was President.
Albert Einstein, usually considered a fairly smart fellow, once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I keep hoping that our ‘progressives,’ who consider themselves to be very smart people indeed, eventually see that, despite their very good and noble intentions, that what they have been doing, how they have cast their votes, has led to only bad results.
At some point, you’d think that even the most liberal of the liberals would realize that without some semblance of law and order, you no longer have civilization! In the end, 'progressive' and 'civilized' are mutually exclusive terms
Perhaps, just perhaps, even the George Soros-sponsored, police-hating District Attorney of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, is starting, if just barely, to realize the seriousness of crime, as the District Attorney’s Office has said that they will seek to try the suspect arrested, supposedly the 17-year-old son of attorney and former judicial candidate Qawi Abdul-Rahman, as an adult. But it is also true that the United States Attorney could charge the thus-far unnamed suspect as an adult, if Mr Krasner chose not to do so.
Democratic primary voters in the city rejected Helen Gym Flaherty in the mayoral primary, instead nominating Cherelle Parker Mullins, who has at least contemplated bringing back ‘stop, question, and frisk, with her voting strength coming from the most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the City of Brotherly Love. However, Mrs Mullins was also the only black top-tier candidate in the race, and her strength among black voters could be attributed to that.
So, are the most liberal of the liberals realizing that some semblance of law and order are needed? Mrs Flaherty’s voting strength was primarily among the white liberal areas of the city, including the areas around the University of Pennsylvania, where people are generally safer than in the combat zones, and it is physically safer to vote for the harder left candidates.
My good friend, and occasional website pinch-hitter William Teach pointed out this article to me, and I think it’s an important one:
DC supermarket near closing after $500K in groceries walks out the door
Jamie Joseph | Monday, August 14, 2023 | 4:35 PM EDT
As cities across the U.S. grapple with a growing shoplifting problem, a Washington, D.C., grocery store may be on the verge of closure after rampant theft has depleted much of its resources, a D.C. councilman warned.
A popular Giant Food store reported $500,000 in product loss due to shoplifting, the store’s management told D.C. Councilman Trayon White recently, which equates to roughly 20% of sales after theft.
White called the news “disheartening” in a press conference last week, especially after the store recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire security guards and upgrade its equipment.
Despite its effort to crack down on shoplifters, thieves remained emboldened and continued to walk out of the store with their carts filled with stolen items, White said.
“We know it’s tough times, and we know the price of food has skyrocketed in the last three years,” White said. “Well, we cannot afford to hurt ourselves by constantly taking from the store, because I mean, everybody is going to be without a place to eat, and enough is enough.”
The store has had to stop suspects 135 times, “and they almost doubled that amount and didn’t get stopped,” White said.
If the store has to shut its doors, White warned the impact would be felt hard in the community, as the chain is the only major grocery outlet in Ward 8, serving more than 85,000 people.
There’s more at the original. Mr Teach pointed out:
Ward 8 is the section of D.C. that is south of the Anacostia River, and, overall, is probably the worst ward for crime. Should this really be happening in our nation’s capitol? This is embarrassing.
Embarrassing? Yes, but unexpected? No, not really, and if the Giant Food Mart closes, people in the area will be left with either having to travel further to buy groceries, or buy them at smaller bodegas or convenience stores, where prices are usually higher. The Philadelphia Inquirer noted, in a completely unrelated article:
Groceries typically operate with very low profit margins of about 1% to 2%. But stores in poor, urban neighborhoods often operate with a 4% loss, Brown said. In Philadelphia’s case, that resulted in supermarket chains largely pulling out of disadvantaged Black and brown neighborhoods by the 1990s.
I still chuckle at the Inky’s stylebook, coming from the Associated Press, of capitalizing ‘Black’ to refer to race, but leaving ‘brown’, which in this case usually means Hispanic, in lower case. We do not engage in such silliness at The First Street Journal, but also do not alter the direct quotes of others.
But I digress. Why would “stores in poor, urban neighborhoods often operate with a 4% loss,” if they were charging the same prices as ones in more affluent areas, unless retail theft is higher in stores in those depressed areas?
Robert Stacy McCain noted that the unprecedented wave of brazen retail theft can be directly attributed to the election of ‘progressive’ politicians and other leftist policies:
“Absolutely unacceptable,” says the mayor who was elected by these same criminals. That’s just it — California has become the world’s first mass kleptocracy. All the honest people have left the state, and the criminals have taken over. Everybody is stealing everything:
Proposition 47 . . . reduced penalties on property thefts less than $950 from a felony to a misdemeanor. This means no prison time. Charges for grand larceny (a felony) now require thefts of more than $950 – more than double the previous threshold of $400.
Now, not only will a thief steal more without facing a felony charge, they may steal again, and again, and again, without serious consequences. Each theft is counted as a single incident. The law allows for serial thefts. Thieves can repeat their criminal behavior as long as they don’t steal more than $950 in each larceny.
Proposition 47 passed with 60% of the vote in 2014, and opponents of the measure clearly warned that this would happen, so it’s not as if the people of California are victims — they inflicted this disaster on themselves.
‘Progressivism’ in the United States is a mindset that we just have to be understanding and kind to everyone — except, of course, those evil reich-wing MAGA Republicans! — and have sympathy for the poor and downtrodden. The result has been a serious relaxation of law enforcement, especially since the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled previously convicted felon and career criminal George Floyd, and now the criminal culture has metastasized, with more and more of those poorer people realizing that they don’t have to obey the law, at least not for the more ‘minor’ offenses, because breaking the law brings no real consequences to them. And despite the great sympathy for the poor and downtrodden, that increase in crime has occurred in just those areas in which the poor and downtrodden live! Mr McCain said, “All the honest people have left the state,” but that’s hyperbole, and not true at all. Some of the honest people have left the Pyrite State, but, just as the well-to-do, honest people in Rittenhouse Square and University City haven’t been the victims of crime themselves, many have remained, safely able to vote for ‘progressive’ politicians and policies, because their personal philosophies haven’t been punched in the mouth by street crime.
The real victims? The people of Kensington have been made victims, not by wallowing in the open-air drug markets themselves, but by tolerating its existence, and voting for the politicians who won’t clean it up. The honest, working-class employees of the Giant Food Mart in Ward 8, and the Nordstrom in the Topanga Mall, have been made victims, because, if things keep going as they have been, when the store closes, they’ll lose their jobs.
This is the conundrum that the left just can’t seem to understand: in their great and noble sympathy for the poor, the downtrodden, and minority Americans, their policies have made things worse for those very same people. In their attempts to shield them from the realities of law, order, and civilization, they have subjected poorer and minority communities to lawlessness, disorder, and barbarians.
Philly’s Mother of the Year Has The Philadelphia Inquirer finally admitted that there are gangs in the city?
We have expended some bandwidth mocking The Philadelphia Inquirer for its statement that there are no real gangs in the City of Brotherly Love:
In Philadelphia, there are no gangs in the traditional, nationally known sense. Instead, they are cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families. The groups have names — Young Bag Chasers, Penntown, Northside — and members carry an allegiance to each other, but they aren’t committing traditional organized crimes, like moving drugs, the way gangs did in the past.
We also mocked the George Soros-sponsored defense attorney who is now the city’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, when his office decided to refer to them as rival street groups. And we pointed out, at the end of last year, that what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. was still using euphemisms to refer to gangs those cliques of young men, though the word “gang” in one article, apparently for prosaic reasons, since the term “street group” had been used previously in the same sentence.
Well, perhaps 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 at the Inky got tired of being mocked; I know that I wasn’t the only one doing it!
Angel Mason; photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.
A Southwest Philly street gang burglarized three gun stores, stealing nearly 100 guns, DA says
Members of 54th Street targeted gun stores in the suburbs, prosecutors said Wednesday, committing overnight, smash-and-grab burglaries that put guns in the hands of criminals.
by Vinny Vella | Thursday, January 25, 2023
Investigators in Montgomery County dismantled a Philadelphia street gang that they say burglarized a series of suburban gun stores in the fall, stealing 93 firearms that they used in shootings in the city or sold to other criminals. One of the guns, prosecutors said, was used in the murder of a 16-year-old.
OK, reporter Vinny Vella gets a point for using the word “gang,” but he loses a point for using the horrible, made-up word “burglarized,” which has, sadly, come into the dictionary, when the proper word is “burgled.”
Liv Hall, Photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.
In a sweeping affidavit of probable cause released Wednesday, prosecutors outlined the investigation of 54th Street, a gang active in Southwest Philadelphia. The group, mostly teens, wielded guns openly on social media and in music videos of rap songs in which they bragged about killing their rivals and terrorizing their neighborhoods, according to the document.Two adults and 11 juveniles were charged in the investigation, but only four were named in the affidavit: Angel Mason, 40, Elijah Terrell, 16, Donte Purnell, 22, and Liv Hall, 18. The nine other suspects, between the ages of 14 and 17, have been charged in juvenile court and were not publicly identified.
All have been charged with operating a corrupt organization, conspiracy, gun violations, and related offenses.
Elijah Terrell, photo via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.
Hmmm, young Miss Hall looks like she never expected to get into this kind of trouble! The Inky, of course, did not include her photo, but Fox 29 News did.
But she’s 18-years-old, legally an adult, and she (allegedly) took a stupid decision to join in burgling a gun store. They whooped and partied and made some good bucks last fall, but now someone is stone-cold graveyard dead, shot by one of the guns the 54th Street clique of young men, and apparently women as well, (allegedly) stole, and since the burglary occurred in Montgomery County and not Philadelphia, Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner won’t be able to cut her any sweetheart plea bargain.
None of the attorneys representing the four charged as adults had any comments concerning the cases. Mr Vella wrote that he found no indication that two of the defendants had yet hired lawyers.
According to Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, only 33 of the stolen guns have been recovered. That means that sixty of the stolen firearms are still out there, almost certainly in the hands of other criminals. Perhaps, just perhaps, the gun control laws the editors of the Inquirer say that Philly ought to be able to enact on the city’s own authority wouldn’t do anything at all to have stopped a few dozen bad guys from obtaining the firearms they wanted.
Donte Purnell, photos via Steve Keeley, Fox 29 News.
The first burglary was committed on September 24, 2022, when Miss Hall and four of the charged juveniles broke into Founding Fathers Outfitters in Springfield Township, getting away with 26 handguns, only six of which have been recovered.
Angel Mason would be my nominee for Mother of the Year in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy, Philadelphia. It seems that 16-year-old Elijah Terrell, her son, (allegedly) attempted to rob a man at gunpoint in Southwest Philly, but was thwarted when his intended victim drew his own weapon and shot Mr Terrell. After that, our Mother of the Year candidate supposedly called 22-year-old Donte Purnell, who is also her son, to tell him to get the stolen weapons out of their home before detectives arrived with a search warrant.
There comes a point at which it’s difficult to believe that anything else in Philly could surprise you, and then you read a story like this. Apparently there’s really no bottom to the decadence in the City of Brotherly Love. Liv Hall, the fourth suspect pictured? She was caught when she (allegedly) used one of the weapons from the first burglary to shoot at her brother during an argument outside of their home.
These people were caught not so much because they are evil but because they are just boneheadedly stupid. Who knows, Miss Mason might be the leader of this gang, but a criminal mastermind she isn’t.
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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| ↑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. |