Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

Posted on by

Amanda Marcotte doesn’t care about murders unless they are politically useful

It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter photo was taken in a bar.

My good friend Amanda Marcotte — OK, OK, she’s not actually my good friend; she hates my evil reich-wing guts and has blocked me on her Twitter account — left Brooklyn and moved to South Philadelphia a couple of years ago. One would think that the über-feminist would be concerned about the huge homicide rate in her adopted home town, but if she is, she certainly hasn’t written about it in Salon.

The City of Brotherly Love saw 499 people give up their last breath in 2020, just one under the record of 500 set in 1990, the depths of the crack cocaine wars. That’s an average of 1.363 murders per day!

Well, guess what: with 77 days elapsed thus far in 2021, Philly is slightly ahead of that mark, at 1.377 per day. But 2020’s 499 mark was ‘achieved’ a bit later in the year; while 106 people were murdered in Philly’s mean streets by 11:59 PM EDT on March 18th, ‘only’ 80 had done so by the same date last year, and the same date last year included another day, due to 2020 being a leap year. City homicides increased as the weather warmed up, as is usually the case.

Miss Marcotte never noted the near-record homicides from last year, when even The Philadelphia Inquirer, which seems to run homicide stories only when something unusual happens, the victim is a ‘somebody’ or an innocent or, of course, a cute little white girl.

Instead, she continued in her usual #TrumpDerangementSyndrome ways.

However, her most recent two stories are about murders. Murders in Georgia, that is: Sarah Everard and the Atlanta spa shootings show how victim blaming continues even after #MeToo and Atlanta spa shootings and the Capitol riot: Gun control is the best tool to fight terrorism.

The murders in the Atlanta burbs have their trumped up racial element, because six of the eight ‘massage parlor workers’ were of Asian ethnicity. Miss Marcotte just loves to blame interracial murders on conservatives or Donald Trump, or really anybody she doesn’t like. She was pretty gleeful about the #BlackLivesMatter protests after the killing of convicted felon George Floyd, attending at least one herself, openly lamenting that “It’s true that anti-lockdown protesters who pack high-powered rifles and scream in cops’ faces haven’t hurt anyone, at least not yet.“

Also see: The Other McCain: Atlanta: The ‘Yellow Fever’ Theory

She wrote:

“Noobs are forever.” That’s what my partner[1]While Miss Marcotte has long been proud of living with Marc Faletti absent the benefit of clergy, her Wikipedia biography lists Mr Faletti as her “Husband.” jokingly said to me this weekend, after the two of us attended the strikingly huge Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Philadelphia on Saturday.

We were talking about the phalanxes of newcomers to the movement — often identifiable by their well-meaning but tone deaf signs — who had joined with more seasoned BLM protesters who have been at this for years. We’d both been to BLM protests before, most notably an enormous one in New York in 2014, after an NYPD officer choked Eric Garner to death. But there’s no question that something has shifted, and lots of people who had previously stayed out of the movement now felt compelled to pick up signs and march in the streets against police brutality.

The result is not just that protests seem bigger, but almost more numerous, spreading out not just to every large city but also the suburbs and small towns of America. (The Texas town where I went to high school, which has a population of 6,000, saw a protest on Saturday that drew hundreds of attendees.) There have been many and varied protest movements in the era of Donald Trump, with some — like the Women’s March or the climate strikes — being more successful than others. But BLM seems to be rising above, becoming the protest movement that is doing the best at harnessing the larger anger out there about Trump and his supporters and enablers.

Black Lives Matter is capturing those who have just woken up and, more than any other progressive movement, is turning that noob energy into action.

I will admit it: not being an aging hipster like Miss Marcotte, 43, I had to look up the meaning of ‘noob.’

I spent some time perusing her Salon articles on the George Floyd protests, and one thing struck me: she was far more concerned about the political value of the protests, and their ability to hurt President Trump, than she ever was about that fact that Mr Floyd was killed.

Naturally, as a writer who can work from home, with a partner who can apparently do the same, she absolutely supported the lockdowns, and contrasted them with the #BlackLivesMatter/Antifa protests:

Liberals never wanted “forever quarantine.” That’s a straw man erected by Donald Trump and his supporters. What liberals wanted was an temporary and necessary lockdown to buy time for the federal government to ramp up a testing regime and other health care capacity to deal with the virus.

Trump refused to use the time to do any that, and so it’s no wonder the progressives — who are just as fed up with staying home as conservatives — are exploding in the streets right now. Of course the primary reason for the protests is police brutality, and the motivating incident was the police murder of George Floyd. But the anger fueling the movement has many causes, including three and a half years of the Trump presidency and rage at the federal government for failing us so miserably with the coronavirus response.

Perhaps the left not wanting a “forever quarantine” is laid a bit hollow by President Biden wanting everyone to wear masks until “everyone is, in fact, vaccinated,” and well into 2022. That people might protest the lockdowns because, unlike her partner and her, they can’t work from home and many have lost their jobs, well, who cares about them? Mr Faletti and she apparently saw nothing wrong with breaking Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) orders against large gatherings to join the protest marches.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t find much from her on the actual killings of George Floyd, who was high on a toxic dose of Fentanyl and methamphetamines, or Breonna Taylor, who was killed when her bedpartner started shooting at police and they returned fire, or Walter Wallace in Philadelphia, who was charging at the cops with a knife; all that concerned her was the political advantage to be gained.

And that, to me, explains her stony silence about the murder rate in her adopted home town. While Chicago sees more total murders, Philadelphia’s murder rate is significantly higher, 31.60 per 100,000 population compared to the Windy City’s 28.38, but the uncomfortable fact is that the vast majority of both murder victims in Philly, and their killers, where known, are black, and that does not yield any political benefit for the liberals’ positions.

Of course, I’ve used Miss Marcotte’s writings as a small example of what the left do writ large. I’ve said it before: in Philadelphia, in Chicago, in many of our larger cities, black lives don’t matter unless they are taken by a white person.

References

References
↑1 While Miss Marcotte has long been proud of living with Marc Faletti absent the benefit of clergy, her Wikipedia biography lists Mr Faletti as her “Husband.”
Posted on by

Killadelphia!

I noted, just three days ago, that with 89 homicides in just 67 days of 2021, that the City of Brotherly Love, at that point killing off 1.328 people per day, ought to hit 100 homicides on March 16th.

Well, it seems that the good natured and kind hearted people of Philadelphia have taken that as a personal challenge; at the end of the 70th day, March 11th, 96 people have bitten the dust there, raising the rate to 1.371 per day. That means it should only take three days to kill off the four people needed to reach 100 homicides, which now means the end of March 14th.

At least on its main page, at 10:45 AM EST, The Philadelphia Inquirer doesn’t have a single story about any of the murders, about any of the seven homicides over the past three days. I guess none of the victims was a ‘somebody’ or a cute little white girl.

I’ve said it before: in Philadelphia, black lives don’t matter. The Philadelphia Tribune reported that, of the 499 homicides in the city in 2020, 86% of the victims were black, in a city in which less than 44% of the population are black. That black lives don’t matter is evidenced by the silence of the Inquirer when they are snuffed out. The #woke staffers who forced the resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski for his headline “Buildings Matter, Too” during the #BlackLivesMatter protests don’t seem to bother reporting on young black men being murdered because, well because young black males being murdered in Philadelphia simply isn’t news anymore. It would be a bigger story if a weekend day passed in the city without a killing.

I’m guessing that the Inquirer will have a story once that 100 homicides milestone is reached. That’s about all you can expect from them.

Posted on by

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is really just the fall guy (fall gal?). The real problem is Mayor Jim Kenney

March 8th is the 67th day of the year. As of March 8th last year (which was actually the 68th day, 2020 being a leap year), the City of Brotherly Love had seen 67 homicides, or 0.985 killings per day. It was also the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, just before the lockdowns — you remember, 15 days to flatten the curve? — and the school closures and millions of people being thrown out of work.

But on the 67th day of 2021, 89 souls were sent early to their eternal rewards in Philadelphia’s mean streets, 1.328 per day. Doing a little math here, it should take only eight more days, until March 16th, for Philly to reach 100 homicides.

On the 8th, The Philadelphia Inquirer published an OpEd defense of Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw:

Danielle Outlaw put in an untenable position by Kenney administration

In order to ensure the overall safety of Philadelphia’s citizens and their neighborhoods, emergency management in Philadelphia County should be immediately reassessed.

by Joseph Certaine | March 8, 2021

Amid calls last month for Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw to tender her resignation for mishandling the response to summer protests following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, it’s important to consider that she is not the only person at fault here.

Commissioner Outlaw, who had only been on the job for a few months when the protests began, was put in an untenable position by this administration. From my view, as a former managing director, the Kenney administration allowed the new police commissioner to handle large-scale protests without some of the best practices and institutional knowledge that previously determined how the city handled crisis situations.

At that paragraph break, the Inquirer included the boldfaced blurb:

» READ MORE: Danielle Outlaw’s failure should push Kenney to ask for her resignation — but she didn’t fail alone | Editorial

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw.

Well, of course the editors did that! But, as we noted previously, the editors want to punish the puppet, not the puppet master. The editors love them some Democrats, and endorsed Mayor Jim Kenney for re-election in the 2019 primaries, and if they endorsed a different candidate, Anthony Williams, for the Democratic nomination in 2015, it was still a close choice for them between Messrs Williams and Kenney.

The apparently odd notion that many of Philadelphia’s problems stem from Philadelphia’s poor leadership does not seem to have occurred to them. The apparently even odder notion that many of Philadelphia’s problems stem from Philadelphia’s leaderships leftist policies, well, they couldn’t say that, or they’d get another revolt among the #woke in their newsroom.[1]Apparently the idea of firing the forty employees who called out sick in protest, even though the inquirer could replace them all, within a day, from smaller newspapers across the country, is another … Continue reading

Mr Certaine continued, further down:

Why is it that the Kenney administration was not prepared for the uprising that occurred after George Floyd’s murder? Why aren’t questions being asked about preparedness in general? Why is the Fire Commissioner appointed as County Emergency Management Coordinator?

Why? I can answer that question, but the #woke won’t like it. The Kenney administration was not prepared because Mayor Kenney and his minions are far more concerned about leftist political positions than they are with protecting the city and its people.

The last Republican mayor of Philadelphia left office left office on January 7, 1952. Harry Truman was President at the time, and the last two Mayors, Mr Kenney and Michael Nutter, hadn’t been born yet! The City Council is controlled by Democrats, and the labor unions, and that has been the situation for decades. If the policies of the Democrats, if the policies of the liberals actually worked, Philadelphia ought to be an urban paradise, because the wicked ol’ reich-wing conservatives haven’t had any power to obstruct them.

Philadelphia is a disaster zone, a man-made disaster zone, and that’s not going to change anytime soon, because the voters of the city keep electing people who want to make the disaster even worse. Commissioner Outlaw is a convenient fall guy (fall gal?), but she’s still just a puppet.

References

References
↑1 Apparently the idea of firing the forty employees who called out sick in protest, even though the inquirer could replace them all, within a day, from smaller newspapers across the country, is another apparently odd notion which never occurred to the editors. The idea of telling the Special Snowflakes™ to buck up and do their jobs, or they’d find someone who would, that, too, never seemed to happen.
Posted on by

The Philadelphia Inquirer finally publishes a story about a murder victim

Of course, that victim was apparently not a gang banger, so I suppose it was seen as unusual.

A 16-year-old was killed outside a 7-Eleven after looking at a man who took it the wrong way, police say

Police released surveillance video of the suspect, who had gone into the 7-Eleven store with a female companion.

Kahlief Myrick, 16, was fatally shot outside a 7-Eleven store in Southwest Philadelphia on Feb. 18. Police are searching for the gunman. Photo by family, given to The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Julie Shaw | February 24, 2021 | 7:15 PM EST

Police are searching for a gunman who they say killed a 16-year-old outside a 7-Eleven in Southwest Philadelphia last week because the teen looked at him in a way that made him feel disrespected.

“What are you looking at?” police say the man asked the teen when the two encountered each other inside the store.

“What are you looking at?” Kahlief Myrick responded, according to his family.

The man, believed to be in his mid-20s, waited outside for the teen to leave the store and then shot him in the chest, police said.

Police released surveillance video of the alleged gunman inside the store with a female companion. In the video, the suspect could be seen casually picking out potato chips just moments before the shooting.

The victim’s grandparents, Norman and Crystal Boyce, said their grandson was visiting relatives and went to the store with a 19-year-old cousin. The cousin, who they said was too upset to talk to a reporter, told them what happened. The teens did not know the gunman, the family said the cousin told them, and grew upset over a simple glance.

There’s more at the original, including a discussion of the ‘street code,’ and how a perception of disrespect can lead to violence or death.

But what got me was that while the Inquirer was happy enough to publish a photo of the victim, you had to follow the link to the released surveillance video to see a picture of the (alleged) killer. Surely, one would think, that adding that extra link would mean fewer people would see the photo of the (alleged) killer, meaning fewer chances that someone could identify him and report it to the Philadelphia Police.

I, of course, have no compunctions at all about publishing the video on the front page! I wonder why the Inquirer did.

So, assuming this (alleged) killer is caught, and assuming that Philadelphia’s criminal-loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, actually prosecutes him, and assuming that the (alleged) killer is convicted, he could spend the rest of his miserable life getting three hots and a cot in Graterford, courtesy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where at least he won’t be out on the streets hurting other people.

If he hurts other people in prison, well, I might not care all that much.

But murder is not normally an entry-level crime. My guess is that, once we find out who the (alleged) killer is, we will read that he has a long rap sheet, and could have been behind bars on February 18th, when he sent young Mr Myrick to his eternal reward.

Was the (alleged) killer out on the streets because District Attorney Krasner didn’t do his duty? We don’t know that yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Posted on by

And another one bites the dust!

I have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer does not really take much notice of shootings or homicides unless the victim is a cute little white girl. I do not know if the victim in this case is white, but the story made the website because one of the victims isn’t known to be a gang-banger.

Girl, 15, in critical condition after double shooting in West Philly

The shooting happened in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street.

By Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 23, 2021 | 4:43 PM EST

A 15-year-old girl and was hospitalized in critical condition after being wounded in a double shooting Tuesday afternoon in West Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 3:20 p.m. in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street, the girl and a 20-year-old man were both shot in the head, police said. The girl was taken by private amubulance to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The man was taken by police to the same hospital and was listed in stable condition.

Police reported no arrests or other details.

As of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 22, 2021, the City of Brotherly Love had counted 75 homicides, in 53 days of the year. On the same date last year, in which Philadelphia saw 499 killings, just one short of the all-time record, there had been ‘just’ 53, to yesterday’s totals were a 41.5% increase. It looks like Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are doing just an outstanding job, doesn’t it?

Maybe I’m too early with the headline, but if I am with the victim in the Inquirer story, it’ll be true enough of someone else in Philly.

Posted on by

We’re from the Government and we know better than you what you should drive If you live in a Philadelphia row house, just where will you charge your electric car?

Oh, goody! Pennsylvania is about to waste more money . . . again! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Pa. to install electric vehicle chargers in Philly, Ridley Twp., and Quakertown

The Pennsylvania DEP issued nearly $1 million in grants to install fast chargers on West Oregon Ave. in Philadelphia, as well as locations in Ridley Township and Quakertown.

by Frank Kummer | February 19, 2021

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has announced nearly $1 million in grants to install fast chargers on West Oregon Avenue in Philadelphia, as well as locations in Ridley Township, Delaware County; and Quakertown, Bucks County, as part of a larger effort to expand electric vehicle use statewide.

Overall, the $936,000 will pay for 12 fast chargers installed in those locations, as well as four in Allegheny County.

“DEP is committed to supporting this choice by increasing public knowledge of electric vehicles, making it easier for consumers to find electric models, and helping to expand charging infrastructure,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell.

Funding for the project comes from the commonwealth’s share of the national settlement with Volkswagen for cheating on emissions tests.

The author, Frank Kummer, “cover(s) local environmental issues, from the Poconos to the New Jersey Shore.”  His article provides us with the statistics about where the Pennsylvania DEP plans on building the fast chargers:

DEP awarded $750,000 for the three local projects:

  • $250,000 for six fast chargers to be installed by EVgo, the largest public fast-charging network for electric vehicles, at Cedar Realty Trust in Quartermaster Plaza at 2300 West Oregon Ave. in Philadelphia, a site that’s located within an environmental justice community — defined as an area with certain socioeconomic challenges — and within a half-mile of I-76.
  • $250,000 for four fast chargers to be installed by EVgo at Albertsons Acme Market at 124 Morton Ave. in Ridley Township. The location is within two miles of I-95 and I-476.
  • $186,619 for two fast chargers to be installed by EV Build in a mall parking lot at 100 N.W. End Boulevard in Quakertown. The project is located along high-traffic Route 309.

Officials said the chargers will be located in community hubs to serve local residents of single homes and apartments. They are part of a network the DEP and PennDOT hope to build to help drivers traveling longer distances from their homes. The goal is to have chargers every 50 miles along highways and no more than five miles from the road. Interstates 76, 95, 376, and 476 are key.

I will admit to shaking my head at the notion of investing in fast charging stations in an “area with certain socioeconomic challenges,” given that such would be an area which will see a slower adoption of plug-in electric vehicles, because the residents are less able to pay for them. That was a point which Mr Kummer did not mention.

But, with all of the statistics and documentary hyperlinks Mr Kummer included, he omitted the one that most people don’t know about: how long it takes to charge your plug-in electric vehicle! While I cannot read Mr Kummer’s mind, I know why I wouldn’t mention that in an article of the nature of the one he wrote: because it would totally turn off people to the idea of plug-in electrics!

How long does it take to charge an electric car?

Charging an electric car can take a matter of minutes or days, depending on what method you use. Here, we take a look at the ins and outs of the process…

by Martin Saarinen | 28 January 2021

The time it takes to charge an electric car can be as little as 30 minutes or more than 12 hours. This depends on the size of the battery and the speed of the charging point.

  • A typical electric car (60kWh battery) takes just under 8 hours to charge from empty-to-full with a 7kW charging point.
  • Most drivers top up charge rather than waiting for their battery to recharge from empty-to-full.
  • For many electric cars, you can add up to 100 miles of range in ~35 minutes with a 50kW rapid charger.
  • The bigger your car’s battery and the slower the charging point, the longer it takes to charge from empty to full.

Tip: Charging an electric car is similar to charging a mobile phone; you top it up during the day if you need to and give it a full charge at home overnight.

Emphases in the original.

The first bullet point is for an at-home charging unit; the third is for a “fast charging station,” such as the type mentioned in Mr Kummer’s article.

Most people don’t know how long it takes to charge an electric vehicle.

Think about that: if you can add roughly 100 miles of driving range in about 35 minutes, but your gasoline-powered car gets 300 miles of range on a single tank of fuel, the article is saying that to match your gasoline powered vehicle’s one-tank range would require roughly 105 minutes at the “fast charging station.”[1]The 36 gallon tank on my 2010 Ford F-150 gives me about 625 miles of range!

Do you want to replace 5 to 10 minutes at the gas station with one hour and 45 minutes?

Philadelphia has more row houses than any other city.

The article suggests “topping off” during the day, and fully charging overnight at home. That’s a great idea . . . if you have a garage or secure, dedicated parking space at home where you can install an at-home charger. If you don’t, that means complete dependence on public charging stations. If you live in a Philadelphia row house, something fairly common — though often in poorer shape than the ones pictured at the left — in what Mr Kummer described as “an environmental justice community, defined as an area with certain socioeconomic challenges,” just where are you going to put that at home charging unit? Are you going to be running an electric cable out your basement window to your car parked on the street?

Think about that. You might be able to get away with just the 35-minute 100 mile range topping off, but it will also mean stopping at the charging station thrice as often as you have to pump gasoline now.

Car and Driver has a good article on the basics of charging up your vehicle. When using a fast charging station, the article notes that:

A certifiably lethal current of DC power is pumped into the car’s battery, and miles of range are added in short order. Tesla’s V3 superchargers pump out up to 250 kW, and Electrify America’s automotive defibrillators fire out up to 350 kW of heart-stopping power.

“Certifiably lethal”, huh? Yeah, that’s what I want to see, 17-year-olds using 240 volt three-phase power cables!

In the rain and the snow of the City of Brotherly Love.

Am I the only one who sees this as maybe not the greatest idea ever?

If you have a good garage with sufficient electric service, an electric car might not be that bad an idea for you, depending upon your other circumstances. In our current home, out in the country, with a garage with separate electric service, we are as well-situated as anyone to replace one car with a plug-in electric, as long as I can keep my F-150 powered by gasoline. But in our previous home? It would not have worked. If you live in rental property, it might not work, and I can easily see a landlord increasing the rent by $50 or $100 a month for the installation of an vehicle charging station if he did allow it.

The climate change activists, whose numbers now, sadly, include the President of the United States, have no conception of what regular people live like, and how much they are trying to impose on people. But you will do what you are told, won’t you?

References

References
↑1 The 36 gallon tank on my 2010 Ford F-150 gives me about 625 miles of range!
Posted on by

Schadenfreude! Hard left feminist decries surge in homeschooling, but the surge is caused by leftist teachers’ unions trying to keep public schools closed

Feminist Jill Filipovic McCormick is not a fan of home schooling:

Right-wing groups love to push homeschooling because it helps keep kids away from material that might challenge their conservative worldview, and it keeps women out of work and in the home. It’s a pretty transparent set of motivations, not good for women or children.

This is a pet issue of mine and some day I’ll write about it at length, but the whole conversation about homeschooling would go very differently if we believed children had a right to a high-quality education — or if we believed children had rights at all, separate from parents.

Please do note that my tweet talks about what motivates right-wing groups to push homeschooling — it does not say that parents who homeschool have a single set of motivations (they certainly do not). Plz work on reading comprehension before you teach your kids.

…and just observing how many people on the right are big mad at the idea that “children should have rights.

The previous four paragraphs are the rest of the Twitter thread Mrs McCormick posted; it’s simply easier for the reader for me to copy and paste them; no changes to her text have been made.

Twitchy noted many objections made to Mrs MCormick’s tweets, which you can read if you follow this link.

I had made a few reply tweets to her:

Yet the teachers’ unions, which are 75% female, want to keep the public schools closed to in-person classes, forcing primarily women to stay at home to care for their children. The teachers still get paid, but many of the other public school employees are out of work.

It’s been women’s careers which have been more negatively impacted by the virus, yet it’s the heavily female, politically liberal teachers’ unions which have been most resistant to resuming in-person classes.

Here’s How the Pandemic Is Affecting Women’s Careers: Women have been disproportionately hit by job losses and many of those who are working say they may have to step back.

And, of course, parents who can somehow afford it have shown a tendency to pull students from the closed-to-in-person instruction public schools in favor of private, frequently religious, private schools

Public Schools Will Struggle Even More as Parents Move Kids to Private Ones During the Pandemic.

Then there’s the President attempting to force acceptance of ‘transgenderism’ on the public schools. Why would it surprise anyone that some parents might not accept that, and choose to abandon the public schools?

Now, I was going to let it go at that, until I opened The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website this morning, and found this gem:

Philly teachers union says it’s ‘not safe’ to reopen schools. It wants the city to intervene.

by Kristen A. Graham and Maddie Hanna | February 4, 2021 | 9:20 AM EST

The city teachers union says it doesn’t have confidence buildings are safe for reopening, setting up a showdown with the Philadelphia School District over a planned Monday return for some teachers.

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan (David Maialetti/ The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan said Wednesday night he has called on the city to assign a neutral third party who will examine evidence presented by both sides and decide whether buildings are in suitable shape for a return.

That’s a move open to Jordan based on a memorandum of understanding signed by the union and district in the fall, requiring the involvement of the Mayor’s Office of Labor and a “world-renowned physician” to weigh in swiftly on reopening disputes. If the outside expert determines the district is not in compliance with safety standards, they will direct the school system to fix the problems.

After weeks of back and forth and meetings with district officials Monday and Tuesday, Jordan said he still had deep concerns over ventilation, especially in schools where window fans are still being installed to improve air flow, and other safety issues.

There’s more at the original, but it all boils down to one thing: no matter what the school district does, it will never be enough. Here in the Bluegrass State, the Fayette County schools remain closed for other “reasons,” even though the Commonwealth has begun COVID-19 vaccinations prioritizing teachers.

The Inquirer article noted that the Philadelphia public schools have been closed to in-person instruction since last March; that’s eleven months! And if the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers gets its way, the schools will be closed to in-person instruction for a full year.

We might as well face facts: we have lost an entire educational year! From The Washington Post:

It’s time to admit it: Remote education is a failure

Opinion by Helaine Olen, Columnist | December 2, 2020 | 11:32 AM EST

Whenever someone expressed concerns about the quality of remote education back in the early days of covid-19, they were all but shamed into silence. No, the spring did not go well, but that was done on the fly, with next to no preparation. No, it’s not an ideal solution, but staying with in-person instruction is out of the question. There is a learning curve, we were told. We’ll get this thing right with time.

Here’s how that worked out: In Houston, the number of students with failing grades is exploding. In St. Paul, Minn., a high school student is almost as likely to be on track to fail a class as pass it. In the junior high and high schools of Fairfax County — one of the wealthiest counties in the United States — 1 out of 10 students flunked at least two classes, and the number was almost double that for those with disabilities. Enrollment is falling in closed school districts from coast to coast and many points in between. Some children are exiting for private schools, or private pods. Others are simply MIA.

In the vast majority of cases, remote learning is a poor substitute for in-person education — no matter what efforts are made, no matter how many teacher trainings are offered.

It’s not simply a matter of subpar or nonexistent Internet or computer access, something that impacts students from more than 4 million households. Small children, as it turns out, will not sit in front of a computer to listen to a teacher or complete an assignment without supervision. That means millions of parents — for the most part, moms — got conscripted as unpaid teacher’s assistants. And while older children don’t need parents next to them in order to do their work, they often won’t do it regardless.

There’s more at the original, and yes, it is an opinion columnist who wrote it, but Helaine Olen included a lot of linked information, which is why I chose to use it.

We have frequently noted the efforts of private schools to open, despite the orders of state Governors. And private school enrollment has reversed a decades-long decline and showing increased enrollment. The number of students being homeschooled has shot up as well, though some officious bureaucrats are trying to stop that.[1]Full disclosure: My daughters attended parochial schools for part of their education.

I will admit to some schadenfreude here: it is the actions of the public school teachers and their unions which are helping to increase both private and parochial school enrollments and homeschooling, the very thing Mrs McCormick hates. It isn’t we evil reich-wing conservatives forcing and keeping the public schools closed; it’s the actions of the primarily liberal and Democratic public school teachers and their unions.

References

References
↑1 Full disclosure: My daughters attended parochial schools for part of their education.
Posted on by

Chicago thinks it’s the murder capital; Philly says, “Hold my beer!”

I had noted on Twitter that the City of Brotherly Love was exceeding its one-short-of-the-record homicide rate for 2020, though we aren’t even through January, the coldest month of the year, and that The Philadelphia Inquirer hadn’t even noticed it:

I did see an article on the Inquirer’s website yesterday evening, noting that two men had been murdered in a bodega:

Two men fatally shot in North Philly store

by Mensah M. Dean | January 28, 2021 | 6:17 PM EST

Two men were fatally shot in a North Philadelphia store Thursday in what police are calling a double homicide.

Shortly before 1 p.m., police were called to the Al-Madinah Traders store in the 3600 block of Germantown Avenue, which sells jewelry, perfume, books, and other items. Police said passersby had found the men dead inside the store.

Police did not release the names of the victims, but described one as a man in his 40s who had been shot two times in the face, and the other as a man shot once in the head. His age was not given. Both were pronounced dead on the scene by medics.

As of Thursday evening, police had made no arrests and had not recovered weapons, they said.

The article author continued to note that the number of homicides was well above the same date in 2020, and that two other men had been murdered that morning, on in Kensington and one in the Wissinoming neighborhood.

So, that was four people sent early to their eternal rewards on Thursday, so I figured that I’d see 45 as the total when I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crimes Statistics page this morning. I was wrong; it wasn’t 45, it was 46!

That’s compared to 35 slaughtered by January 28, 2020, a 31.4% increase.

As noted two days ago, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer blamed the Police Commissioner, the ironically named Danielle Outlaw, for the Police Department’s response to the #BlackLivesMatter protests. The Editorial Board thought that Miss Outlaw’s response was too harsh; I thought it too lenient.

But what the Editorial Board did not do was blame the huge jump in homicides on Commissioner Outlaw, or Mayor Jim Kenney, or District Attorney Larry Krasner, the three top law enforcement officials in Philadelphia.

People think of Chicago under its ridiculous Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, as the nation’s murder capital. In 2020, the Windy City saw 769 homicides, 270 more than Philadelphia. But Chicago has a population of 2,710,000, while Philly’s is 1,579,000. Crime rates are compared by rate per 100,000 population, and that leaves Chicago with a homicide rate of 28.38 per 100,000.

Philadelphia laughs and says, “We can beat that!”, checking in with a murder rate of 31.60 per 100,000.

As of January 25th, Chicago had 44 homicides, compared to Philly’s 37, but the disparity in population means that the City of Brotherly Love was far ahead.

New York City saw a huge rise in homicides as well, from 319 in 2019 to 462 last year, 44.8%, fewer than Chicago’s or Philadelphia’s, even though its population is several times that of the latter two cities.

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York is on the fast track back to the Hell that Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned up, and even the liberal Michael Bloomberg didn’t trash. What New York and Chicago and Philadelphia all need is solid, conservative, no f(ornicating) nonsense mayors, district attorneys and police commissioners who will actually fight crime.