Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

Posted on by

The murder rate in Philadelphia has dropped Has The Philadelphia Inquirer actually noticed?

I have frequently referred to ‘journolists’ as opposed to journalists at The Philadelphia Inquirer. The spelling ‘journolist’ 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. I will admit to also using it to refer to reporters who just don’t look at all of the facts.

‘Silence, and then screams’: Panic and numbness amid Labor Day weekend shootings in Philadelphia

The unofficial end of summer didn’t slow a record year of gun violence. Between Friday and Sunday, at least 13 people were shot in Philadelphia, two fatally.

by Anna Orso | September 6, 2021

Forty minutes feels like an eternity when lives are on the line.

That’s how long it took Brandon Collins to get home from work Friday evening after his sister called frantically: Someone had sprayed bullets right outside their home on the 1500 block of South Cleveland Street in Point Breeze. And Collins was terrified for his 58-year-old mother’s safety.

She was physically unharmed, but Collins was left shaken. “Things happen in a split second,” he said.

Police said two men had been shot and were hospitalized in the incident — a 33-year-old hit in the arm and hip, and a 24-year-old struck in the foot. An SUV that belonged to an uninvolved resident was riddled with bullet holes. No one was arrested, and police haven’t determined a motive.

That was how Labor Day weekend began in Philadelphia as the city’s unrelenting gun violence crisis continued. Even as the Made in America festival packed Center City and some residents bolted for the Shore, others across the city were left fearful for their family’s safety, or their own.

You have to get down to the ninth paragraph, past two large photographs and two ads, before you come to this part:

    More than 1,500 people have been struck by bullets in Philadelphia this year, and the city has recorded 358 homicides, most by guns. Police officials said during a news conference last week that 179 people were shot over four weeks in August, a 23% decrease compared to the previous four weeks.

    But that decrease was from a historically high level of gun violence in July. And the 186 shooting victims in all of August was more than in any month between 2015 and May 2020, when shootings spiked dramatically.

Journalists know that the further down in a story you get, the fewer readers who began it are still reading.

The Philadelphia Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Labor Day, September 6th, there had been 363 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year. With 249 days of the year having elapsed, that gives Philly an average of 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.

As we reported on July 9th, the city then had a rate of 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. Thus, even with the really, really bad part of the year in teh statistics, the ‘projected’ homicide total for 2021 has dropped by thirty souls.

But there’s more. Over the last 1½ months, the murder rate has really dropped. There had been 314 homicides as of July 22nd, the 203rd day of the year. Since that time, 46 days ago, there have been ‘just’ 49 murders, a rate of 1.0652 per day. With 116 days left in 2021, if that rate were maintained, there would be ‘just’ 124 more killings, for a total of 487 for the year, 12 fewer than last year, and 13 fewer than 1990’s all time record of 500. If that number was the final one, it would be 75 fewer homicides than the math had projected just two months ago.

Which raises the obvious question: why has the homicide rate decreased? After all, mid-July through Labor Day is part of the long, hot summer, when killings seem to be at their peak. Did a really bad gang or two just get completely wiped out? Did a few gangs come up with a truce? Whatever happened, this ought to be a question real journalists would attempt to investigate.

Posted on by

The unintended (?) consequences of being #woke

The left have been slamming police departments across this country ever since the death of George Floyd while he was resisting arrest in Minneapolis. Had Mr Floyd just gotten in that police car when he was arrested, he’d be alive today, or at least he would be if he didn’t overdose on the fentanyl he was using at some point. The left and the #woke and antifa all led Mostly Peaceful Protests™ against the police and doing radical things like obeying the law.

In the City of Brotherly Love, the rioters burned and looted:

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The “Buildings Matter, Too” headline got Stan Wischnowski, then Executive Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer fired to resign, with published Elizabeth Hughes writing that she’s transforming that once-great newspaper into “an anti racist news organization,” and telling readers that the Inquirer was now:

  • Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
  • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
  • Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
  • Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
  • Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
  • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Translation: the Inquirer would censor the news if it might show black or ‘brown’ people committing crimes. We noted the Sacramento Bee’s description of their policy:

Publishing these (booking) photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

As we have pointed out, Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett (D-MN) and state Attorney General Keith bin Ellison (D-MN) are supporting a ballot measure to eliminate the Police Department in Minneapolis, and while Philadelphia hasn’t been that stupid — at least not yet — it’s clear that the chickens are coming home to roost:

Police struggle to hire officers and 911 dispatchers as homicides and shootings increase

The Police Department is struggling to find enough officers and 911 dispatchers to hire, amid a surge in violence that is on pace to make 2021 the deadliest year in history.

by Mensah M Dean | Sunday, September 5, 2021

An Overbrook man called 911 last week after hearing breaking glass outside his house and looking out to see a teen breaking into his next-door neighbor’s car, then running off.

Realizing he had just witnessed a burglary in progress, the man raced to his car to give chase. Along the way, he said, he repeatedly called 911 for help — and the phone rang and rang with no answer.

Far from unique, his experience of reaching for help by dialing 911 — to no avail — is being played out across the city as the Philadelphia Police Department grapples with a vacancy crisis among officers and 911 dispatchers.

Finding enough officers and dispatchers has been a challenge, according to department officials, as interest in such jobs declines amid calls for police reform and the national racial reckoning sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. In Philadelphia, city and police union officials say, the decline in interest in policing can also be attributed in part to District Attorney Larry Krasner’s stepped-up prosecution of police misconduct.

There’s more at the original

The Philadelphia Police Department, authorized to have 6,380 officers, is 371 officers below strength. There are only 252 dispatchers, out of an authorized strength of 353, 101 vacancies, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw stated that the city has imposed mandatory weekend overtime for 911 dispatchers to make up the shortfall. The story notes that Philadelphia District Attorney, Larry Soros’ stooge Larry Krasner, has made prosecuting police ‘misconduct’ a priority.

Would you want to be a police officer in the City of Brotherly Love, with far-left idiots like Mr Krasner just salivating at the chance to catch a mistake and prosecute yet another police officer?

It seems that Philadelphia doesn’t even need to dismantle the Police Department, the way the #woke are trying to do in Minneapolis; instead they’ve inflicted a festering wound of a hundred cuts, one which is slowly dismantling the department, because the #woke simply do not believe in law enforcement.

At least, not until one of them is the victim.

The real divide in America is not between Republicans and Democrats, conservative and liberals, or even urban and rural. No, the real divide is between civilized and barbarian. The problem for the left is that, as barbarians, they have surrendered to the wants and mercies of the strongest, and most of them are weaklings.

Posted on by

Philadelphia sports writers might just explain Philly’s murder rate The Inquirer wants to influence the city's culture, but their sportswriters might be going about it the wrong way.

In the city that booed Santa Claus, and which piled heaps of scorn and abuse on Carson Wentz and Ben Simmons after every bad game, Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Marcus Hayes wants to blame 76ers point guard Ben Simmons and (former) Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz for wanting to leave.

    Ben-edict Simmons, Carson Wentz deserve Philadelphia’s fury as they abandon Eagles, Sixers

    They should have spent the summer on their knees, begging forgiveness, promising to improve. Instead, they sabotaged their trade value and put your teams in peril. They completely warrant your wrath.

    By Marcus Hayes | September 4, 2021

    Philly can be an angry place. Just ask Santa.

    Sometimes that anger is misplaced, as Jayson Werth can attest. But, in this moment, every ounce of Philadelphia’s fury directed at Ben Simmons and Carson Wentz is justified.

    Wentz forced a disastrous trade this spring to the Colts after logging one of the worst seasons in NFL history. Simmons, gun-shy in the playoffs, is trying to trump that unholy departure by strong-arming the Sixers, according to an Inquirer report Wednesday.

    They should have returned to the Eagles and Sixers, rehabilitated their images, and enhanced their trade values. They could not, and cannot. They fear competition. They abhor accountability. They see themselves as victims. So, instead, they sabotaged their trade values, which crippled the Eagles, and which probably will cripple the Sixers. That, on its own, should infuriate fans, even if the pair’s dismissiveness didn’t.

    Wentz and Simmons should have spent the summer of 2021 down on their knees, begging for your forgiveness, working on their flaws, willing to accept whatever role their bosses decided would best help the team. They should have apologized to their teammates for their shortcomings and for the distractions they caused. They should have pledged to, in the future, actually earn the millions of dollars that you lavish upon them — paying to watch them on TV, online, or in person; parking your cars and buying beers at the stadiums; purchasing their jerseys and shoes online.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Simmons grew up in Australia, where people aren’t treated the way Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, treat sports stars. Mr Wentz grew up in North Dakota, where people aren’t, you know, [insert plural slang term for the rectum here], yet somehow, some way, people there expect them to have Philly thick skins.

Of course, there are a lot of Philadelphians who don’t have such thick skins, which is why people keep getting shot in the City of Brotherly Love, but I digress.

Mr Simmons is an incredible athlete, but he has one glaring weakness as a basketball player: he just can’t shoot. So, with all that he can do, Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, had to jump on his biggest weakness, and forgot about all of the good things he can do. Philly fans, and sports writers, wanted him to play beyond his skill set, and trashed him when he couldn’t. Even before the playoffs, there were plenty of articles in the Inquirer about him taking very few three point shots. (I remember one in which it was noted that, at the time, Shaquille O’Neal had more career three-pointers than Mr Simmons.)

The pressure got to Mr Simmons, and he had a terrible series against the Atlanta Hawks, shooting just 33.3% . . . from the free throw line! Then, with just 3:30 left in the game, and the 76ers trailing by two, Mr Simmons, who is 6’11” tall, passed up a wide-open dunk over 6’1″ Trae Young. The game, as the announcer said, had gotten in his head.

Mr Simmons was rightly criticized, but Philly fans, and sports writers, went way, way overboard.

Mr Wentz? He was well appreciated, until last season, when he played behind a destroyed-by-injuries offensive line, had no rushing game, and second-quality receivers. His top target, Zach Ertz, was out for five games, yet Philly fans, and sports writers, expected Mr Wentz to be Superman anyway. I wasn’t a particularly good football player, but even in high school I knew that there were eleven guys on the field, all of whom are necessary to make plays, and it doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is, if his receivers aren’t getting open, and his line isn’t keeping the defensive rush off of him, he’s not going to have a good game. Even Tom Brady can’t make great plays when he’s underneath a 260 lb blitzing linebacker.

The article was all about Messrs Simmons and Wentz having no loyalty to their Philadelphia teams, but, in reality, Philly fans, and sports writers, had no loyalty to those players. Mr Hayes is like the abusive husband who gets all urinated off and blames his wife for filing for divorce.

When I think of the homicide rate in Philly, which actually has been coming down of late, it seems to me like the Inquirer sports writers, writ large. People getting pissed off, for reasons that really aren’t that important, and overreacting in the extreme. Mr Hayes, of course, is being paid to overreact, even by the very #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading Inquirer, but, in his own small way, he is contributing to the attitude which so frequently spills out onto the city’s mean streets. Through the end of August, 357 people had been murdered in Philly, which means that there were more murders there than any entire year from 2008 through 2019.

Is that fair to Mr Hayes? He might not think so, but the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love is, in the end, an issue of culture, and the Inquirer is, and wants to be, both an element of, and contributor to, the culture of the city. When published Elizabeth Hughes wrote that the newspaper was trying to become “an anti racist news organization,” she was saying that she wanted her newspaper to become a leader in the community, to make the city a better place in which to live. Thus, it has to be asked: do columns like Mr Hayes’, in which he wrote of Messrs Simmons and Wentz, “So yes, this pair warrants your wrath,” lower the rhetoric, dampen down the anger, reduce the tendency to violence? When he wrote, “Ben-edict Simmons and Ginger Jesus are Philly sports’ version of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wasn’t he asking for an extreme reaction? If players like Messrs Simmons and Wentz, who have virtually nothing to do, personally, with the vast, vast majority of people in Philly, deserve the “wrath” and “fury” of Philadelphia fans, then doesn’t the guy down the block, who stole your girl, or dunked in your face on the playground, or cut you off in trying to grab a parking space, or sold drugs on your corner, deserve your “wrath” and your “fury” even more?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

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

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

Haven’t the editors of The Philadelphia Inquirer noticed the numbers? Homicides and shootings in the city have dropped significantly

We have previously noted the recent decrease in the number of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.

But then, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides had been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. That number stayed fairly consistent, as a week later, with ‘just’ 339 homicides in 228 days, Philadelphia was seeing ‘only’ 1.4868 homicides per day, which works out to ‘just’ 543 over the course of 2021.

As of 11:59 PM on Sunday, August 22nd, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 345 homicides in the city. 345 ÷ 234 days = 1.4744 per day, or 538 projected for the year. The big news is that, over the past 31 days, a full month, if not a calendar month, there have been ‘just’ 31 homicides, ‘just’ 1.00 per day. With 131 days remaining in 2021, if that rate could be maintained, there would be ‘only’ 476 killings in Philly for the year. If The Philadelphia Inquirer has noticed that decrease, I haven’t seen it mentioned. It certainly doesn’t seem as though their Editorial Board has noticed.

    In Philly, someone has been shot every day since Jan. 2 as multiple crises plague the city

    January 2nd was the only day in 2021 in which no person was shot in Philadelphia.

    by The Editorial Board | August 23, 2021

    If you’re looking for ways to quantify the depths of the gun violence crisis in Philadelphia, there may not be many bleaker statistics than this: There’s only been one day so far this year — Jan. 2 — when not a single person was shot in the city.

    Since then, nearly 1,500 people have been shot in Philadelphia, including 295 fatalities. At least 50 other people were murdered by an assailant who used a weapon other than a gun.

    Gun violence drives Philadelphia’s murder rate, which is on pace for a record this year, but it’s essential that the city also address three other factors if officials hope to stem a seemingly unrelenting tide of killings — increasing the rate at which murders are solved, fostering more cooperation from witnesses in criminal prosecutions, and rooting out corrupt officers whose bad practices later lead to convictions being overturned.

    In Philadelphia, murderers have a better chance of winning a coin toss than being arrested. Last Wednesday, during the most recent briefing on the city’s response to gun violence, the police presented data showing that through Aug. 15, only 43% of homicides this year led to an arrest. That homicide clearance rate, or the percentage of killings that lead to an arrest, is on par with recent years.

Am I wrong in thinking that the Editorial Board ought to be noting that fewer people are being killed?

But it’s not just that fewer people are being killed. According to data provided by the city, there were 272 shootings during the 31 days of July, and ‘only’ 145 through the first 22 days of August. If that rate of 6.59 shootings per day holds up for the rest of the month, there would be 204 total shootings in August, a 33.33% decrease.

There’s more at the original, but, if you remember when publisher Elizabeth Hughes said she was going to make the Inquirer “an anti-racist news organization“, you won’t be surprised that the Editorial Board turned quickly to a Larry Krasneresque condemnation of the Philadelphia Police Department, noting Mr Krasner’s ongoing attempts to overturn what they claim are false convictions.

    These exonerations, as well as recent reporting by The Inquirer, have shed light on the coercive and illegal tactics detectives used to get false confessions. This month, Krasner charged three former homicide detectives for lying in the 2016 retrial of Anthony Wright, whose murder conviction was vacated due to DNA evidence.

    Also this month, Krasner asked a judge to hold the Philadelphia Police Department in contempt for failing to turnover police misconduct records.

    Philadelphia’s twin crises of gun violence and homicides are multilayered and intertwined. To reduce the number of unsolved murders in the city, the homicide clearance rate needs to go up. For the homicide clearance rate to go up, witnesses need to have faith that the system is actually seeking justice — not simply trying to improve its statistics by throwing another person in prison.

I’m trying to figure out how the Editorial Board are trying to give witnesses “faith that the system is actually seeking justice” by continually slamming the performance of the Police Department, and so far, I’ve got nothing. When the Board say that the Police Department needs to be “rooting out corrupt officers,” the impression the #woke at the Inquirer are giving — and, I suspect, trying to give — is that most of the city police officers are corrupt.

Posted on by

The unintended consequences of the do-gooders * Updated! *

It looks like Bishop John Stowe isn’t the only one threatening his employees with termination if they don’t take the vaccine:

    Cheryl Bettigole, MD, from her Twitter biography.

    Many Philadelphia health workers remain unvaccinated two months before shots will be required

    by Laura McCrystal | Wednesday, August 18, 2021

    Acting Health Commissioner Cheryl Bettigole said many institutions have applauded Philadelphia’s new vaccine mandate for health care workers, but noted that many employees remain unvaccinated.

    More than a dozen long-term care facilities in Philadelphia have less than 50% of their staff vaccinated, she said.

    ”If you’re more committed to not getting the vaccine than to the safety of your patients, it’s time to do something else,” she said at a Wednesday news briefing. “Health care is not for you.”

Let’s tell the truth here: health care employees at all levels have been exposed to constant, continuous education and pleas to get vaccinated. If they actually wanted to get vaccinated, they would have by now. One might ask why, in a city which gave 81.44% of its votes has so many unvaccinated people.

Like so many on the left,[1]Given this tweet of hers, I think there’s sufficient evidence to associate Dr Bettigole with the political left. Dr Bettigole not only knows what’s best for other people, but insists that it’s her way of the highway. The problem with that is that many, who have already resisted the months’ long pressure to take the vaccines, are going to continue to refuse. What will happen to health care facilities in our nation’s sixth largest city if, say, 25% or 35% of the workforce has to be discharged because they have refused to be vaccinated?

Employers across the nation are complaining that they cannot get people to fill job openings, and people working in health care settings aren’t just burger flippers at McDonald’s, who can be trained in short order. It takes two years to train an Associate degree Registered Nurse, four if she is going for her baccalaureate degree. It can take between four and twelve weeks to train a Certified Nursing Assistant. Requirements to become a CNA in Pennsylvania can be found here, requirements which include a criminal background check.`

Registered Nurses are a lot harder to find than CNAs, and there is only so much that Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) are allowed to do.

As we have previously noted, of the fifteen city zip codes with the lowest vaccination rate, only two are plurality white; in the other 13, four are plurality Hispanic, and nine are plurality black. Seven of those plurality black zip codes have an over 80% black population.[2]19131, 19132, 19138, 19139, 19141, 19142, and 19151, including the neighborhoods of Wynnefield, Overbrook, West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, Strawberry Mansion, West Oak Lane, East Germantown … Continue reading Of the fifteen most heavily vaccinated zip codes, two are plurality white and twelve are absolute majority white. Black Philadelphians have been more vaccine resistant that whites, Asians and Hispanics; if Dr Bettigole carries through with her regulations to fire non-vaccinated health care employees, she will be firing a disproportionate number of black employees.

Tell me just how that’s going to work, will you?

    The city will require all health care workers to be vaccinated by Oct. 15, unless they have medical or religious exemptions. Employees and students of higher-education institutions must also be vaccinated, Bettigole announced last week.

    The mandate for health-care workers includes employees, contractors, students, and volunteers who work in-person at an organization that provides health-care services. Home health aides and nursing home employees are also included.

Home health aides, huh? Home health aides must pass CNA requirements in Pennsylvania, as well as others. What happens if 10% or 20% decline to be vaccinated? Are the clients they serve simply going to go unserved?

    Bettigole said the city hasn’t received much pushback about the mandate, and has “heard from some very happy people.” But officials have also received questions in the last week about health care workers who do not want the vaccine, she said.

    ”We all know that it is simply unacceptable to take the risk of passing a potentially fatal infection to the patients who come to us for help,” Bettigole said.

As Governor Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) case shows, fully vaccinated persons can contract the virus. Being vaccinated means that, if you contract the virus, you will probably have less serious, and perhaps no, symptoms, but you can still contract the virus; vaccination does not stop a person from passing the virus on to others.

Nursing homes have always had problems keeping people, because, to be blunt about it, they are miserable places to work. Dr Bettigole, however, wants to make it doubly hard, and can a significant percentage of the workers already in such settings. I suppose that she thinks that this will be the ‘stick’ to get the rest of the employees vaccinated, but I have to ask: has she considered that, in an environment where we have been very free about granting eligibility for unemployment compensation, and where many ‘workers’ have chosen not to work because the state and the federal government are paying them not to work, that some of those facilities might just have to close?
———————-
Update! 5:00 PM

Well, that didn’t take long!

    AP Source: Biden to require vaccines for nursing home staff

    By Zeke Miller | 4:31 PM EDT

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will require that nursing home staff be vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition for those facilities to continue receiving federal Medicare and Medicaid funding.

    Biden will announce the move Wednesday afternoon in a White House address as the administration continues to look for ways to use mandates to encourage vaccine holdouts to get shots. A senior administration official confirmed the announcement on condition of anonymity to preview the news before Biden’s remarks.

    The new mandate, in the form of a forthcoming regulation to be issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, could take effect as soon as next month.

    Hundreds of thousands of nursing home workers are not vaccinated, according to federal data, despite those facilities bearing the brunt of the early COVID-19 outbreak and their workers being among the first in the country to be eligible for shots.

    It comes as the Biden administration seeks to raise the costs for those who have yet to get vaccinated, after months of incentives and giveaways proved to be insufficient to drive tens of millions of Americans to roll up their sleeves.

There’s more at the original.

But the same problems exist: there are a lot of nursing home staffers, RNs, LPNs and CNAs, as well as those who are not involved in direct patient care, who have chosen against the vaccines. President Biden is going to force all nursing homes to mandate vaccination, which means that all nursing homes are going to lose a significant amount of staff.

The more the government tries to force people to do things, the more resistance will be encountered.

References

References
↑1 Given this tweet of hers, I think there’s sufficient evidence to associate Dr Bettigole with the political left.
↑2 19131, 19132, 19138, 19139, 19141, 19142, and 19151, including the neighborhoods of Wynnefield, Overbrook, West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, Strawberry Mansion, West Oak Lane, East Germantown and West Philadelphia.
Posted on by

The decrease in the homicide rate in Philadelphia It's still way, way, way too high, but some progress has been made. Will it last?

We recently noted that the gang bangers have slowed down their rates of murders in the City of Brotherly Love. With ‘just’ 339 homicides in 228 days, Philadelphia is seeing ‘only’ 1.4868 homicides per day, which works out to ‘just’ 543 over the course of 2021.

That would still shatter 1990’s record of 500, and 2020’s 499, but it’s a far cry from the 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year, that the homicide numbers for July 8th yielded.

But, with 314 homicides reported as of July 22nd, the 203rd day of the year, and 339 reported on August 16th, the 228th day of the year, Philly has seen ‘just’ 25 homicides in the last 25 days, ‘only’ 1.00 per day. If that rate were to be maintained for the rest of the year, Philly would see ‘only’ 476 murders in 2021.

Screen capture from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, August 17, 2021, 11:33 AM. Click to enlarge.

Of course, that’s still a lot, more than any year between 2007 through 2019. And, with 339 so far this year, 2021 has already exceeded the homicide totals for any full year from 2008 through 2017.

We’re still in the long, hot summer, and will be for another month, but it has to be noted: the decline in homicides in Philly occurred during this long, hot summer.

Screen capture from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, August 17, 2021, 9:00 AM. Click to enlarge.

But there’s a sad part to this post. I began it around 8:50 AM, and a screen capture taken right at 9:00 AM showed ‘only’ 337 homicides. The electricity went out here at 9:11 AM, due to a limb falling on a power line somewhere. When the sparktricity came back on, at 10:52 AM — something I didn’t notice for a few minutes, because I was out on the screened in porch, reading a history of the Tudor monarchs in my Kindle — I saw that the Philadelphia Police Department had to update it a second time this morning, to report two more homicides as of 11:59 PM yesterday.

It’s a great thing that the homicide rate has taken a drop over the last almost four weeks; it would be nice to know what has led to that.

Posted on by

If it’s just those evil reich wing Trumpelstiltskins who are refusing to be vaccinated, why doesn’t Philadelphia have an 80% vaccination rate?

Our good friends on the left love to blame evil reich wing Republicans for lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than they believe are acceptable. Of course, only 100% vaccination compliance is acceptable to the left, because the needs of the state outweigh the rights of the individual.

Surprisingly enough, that “anti racist news organization,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, loath as they are to print anything which could be construed negatively on BIPOCs[1]Black, indigenous, people of color., included an interactive map of city vaccination rates by zip code:

Philadelphia’s least-vaccinated zip codes at the beginning of the summer remain its most undervaccinated now, despite door-to-door outreach, targeted clinics, a lottery, and advertising to encourage people to get COVID-19 inoculations.

As the delta variant spreads, and the threat of other variants looms, these parts of the city are the most vulnerable to serious illness and death.

Five of the city’s zip codes had less than 40% of their residents fully or partially vaccinated as of Aug. 9, according to city data — rates that are on par with Arkansas and Louisiana.

You can click on the image, which is a screen capture, to enlarge it, but it is not interactive on this site. I did, however, rather painstakingly create a Microsoft Excel file of the of the data contained in the interactive file, including percentage having received at least one dose of vaccine, the median household income, racial demographics,[2]In the Inquirer’s interactive map, “white” is not capitalized, but “black”, “Latino” and “Asian” are. and the neighborhood names, something traditionally important in Philadelphia.

You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Of the 15 most heavily vaccinated zip codes, white Philadelphians are the plurality in 14 of them, with over 50% of the population in 12 of them, and 49% and 47% in the other two. Only in zip code 19104 are whites not the plurality.

In only two of the fifteen zip codes with the lowest rates of vaccination, 19116 and 19135, do white Philadelphians compose the largest racial/ethnic group. In nine if the fifteen zip codes with the lowest vaccination rates, blacks make up 70% or more of the population, and over 90% in zip codes 19132 and 19138.

It’s true enough that it takes an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me to notice the racial disparity in those statistics, but I’d bet I’m not the only one. One wonders: just whom publisher Elizabeth Hughes will fire for looking up and printing those racially disparate statistics.

In the 2020 elections, Philadelphians gave 603,790 (81.44%) of their votes to Joe Biden, and only 132,740 (17.90%) to President Trump; Mr Biden’s margin of 471,050 votes in the city was far larger than his 81,660 statewide margin; without Philadelphia, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State by 389,390 votes.[3]This is clearly evidence that Philly needs to be walled off, like Manhattan in Escape from New York, all the inhabitants therein considered convicted felons and not be allowed to vote. If the vaccination resistance is all among the evil reich wing Trumpelstiltskins, why aren’t over 80% of people in the City of Brotherly Love vaccinated?

References

References
↑1 Black, indigenous, people of color.
↑2 In the Inquirer’s interactive map, “white” is not capitalized, but “black”, “Latino” and “Asian” are.
↑3 This is clearly evidence that Philly needs to be walled off, like Manhattan in Escape from New York, all the inhabitants therein considered convicted felons and not be allowed to vote.
Posted on by

Have the bad guys run low on ammo in Killadelphia? The homicide rate has dropped dramatically in the last three weeks

As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, July 22nd, the bad guys, thugs and gang bangers of the City of Brotherly Love had killed 314 people. At the end of Tuesday, August 9, 2021, “only” 325 people had been murdered. That’s “only” 11 dead bodies in 18 days! We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.

Now, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides have been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. Yeah, that’s still a record-setting number — there were 500 homicides recorded in 1990, and 499 last year — but it’s a significant decrease in the past few weeks.

Have the gangs called a truce? Have most of the ‘scores’ been settled? Are the bad guys running low on ammo?

If The Philadelphia Inquirer has noticed this, I have managed to miss the stories.

Posted on by

The Philadelphia Inquirer proves my point

We have said, umpteen times, that The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t really care about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love unless the victim is an innocent, a ‘somebody,’ or a cute little white girl.

    Two young athletes were fatally shot this week, leaving West Philadelphia school communities shattered: ‘This can’t be normal’

    “This can’t be normal, this can’t be accepted,” a Boys’ Latin football coach said he told his players. “You have a victim, but you also have a family behind them that are left to pick up the pieces.”

    By Anna Orso | Friday, July 23, 2021

    It had been just a few weeks since K.J. Johnson got his driver’s license. He picked up friends, including his childhood pal Tommie Frazier, and headed to play basketball on Wednesday, a sunny afternoon in West Philly.

    The ride ended in tragedy. Johnson, 16, and Frazier, 18, were fatally shot just after noon while seated in a car on the 200 block of North 56th Street in West Philadelphia, after unidentified gunmen fired into the vehicle. Another 16-year-old was wounded by the bullets fired in broad daylight near a day care and a bus stop.

    As of Friday, no one had been arrested and homicide investigators were still searching for video and witnesses. Police said they found 17 shell casings at the scene.

There’s plenty more at the original, but it all boils down to the same thing we’ve written about before: the victims were good high school athletes, the victims were somebodies.

A previous story noted that:

    The shooting happened at 12:10 p.m. on the 200 block of North 56th Street, when unidentified gunmen opened fire on the teens as they sat in a car, said Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Naish.

    Two males, ages 16 and 18 — whom police did not identify — were pronounced dead at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center after each was struck several times. The other teen, a 16-year-old boy, was taken to Lankenau Medical Center in stable condition, police said.

Seated in a car, each struck several times, and the police recovered 17 shell casings at the scene. This wasn’t random; these victims were deliberately targeted.

Was Mr McCain telling me that I’ve been too much of a broken record on Philadelphia murders? 🙂

Next came another story:

    He ‘didn’t deserve to die this way,’ says family of the 22-year-old killed outside Pat’s Steaks

    Police have charged a Reading man with murder in connection with the killing of David Padro Jr., a 22-year-old from Camden.

    by Anna Orso and Mensah M. Dean | Updated: July 23, 2021

    David Padro Sr. expected to spend this weekend like he did the last one: surrounded by family and hanging out by his pool in South Jersey with his 22-year-old son.

    Instead, he’s planning his son’s funeral.

    David Padro Jr., 22, was fatally shot early Thursday morning in South Philadelphia outside Pat’s King of Steaks, the famed cheesesteak joint where he had stopped for a bite. His father said Padro, of Camden, was in Philadelphia with his girlfriend to go to a nightclub when they stopped to eat and an argument broke out among patrons.

    Then, police say, Paul C. Burkert, a 36-year-old from Reading, pulled a gun. Padro was shot in the shoulder and abdomen and transferred to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 1 a.m. Police said Burkert fled the scene and then turned himself in to National Park Police at Independence Mall.

Burkert faces murder and weapons charges. Court records show he pleaded guilty to a felony drug charge in Berks County in 2019 and was prohibited from possessing a firearm. No attorney for him was listed in court records Friday.

Gee, a convicted druggie, probably a drug dealer, carrying a handgun while out to buy a cheesesteak. He may have been from Reading, but that was real Philadelphia of him!

The Inquirer reported that, despite previous rumors that it was an altercation between Eagles and Giants fans, it was an altercation over a parking space. A photo accompanying the story shows just how crowded Philly’s narrow streets are in that area.

But both cases show what the Inquirer does. They pick some unusual aspect, high school basketball players, or out-or-towners who didn’t know each other, while the typical murders, one bad guy shooting another bad guy, get ignored, and they get mostly ignored because the city doesn’t want to face the real problem: it’s not guns, but a culture which says it’s perfectly reasonable to pull out your Glock and blast someone else.