Tag Archives: #Philadelphia

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Philly starts December off with a bang!

I had planned on doing an article on Philadelphia’s prodigious murder rate yesterday, but got involved with other things. I did, however, tweet about it.

So, 454 homicides through the end of November. I checked my go-to site for those statistics, and shazamm! Philly banged off three more corpses on the first day of December.

The math is simple: 457 homicides in 336 days yields 1.36 killings per day. With 30 more days, including today, left in the year, that works out to a projected 40.8 more dead bodies on the streets. 41 + 457 = 498!

In 1990, the City of Brotherly Love saw 505 homicides, up from 489 the previous year, and 460 in 1988. With 457 homicides so far this year, 2020 is already in 4th place, with 1988’s number to be surpassed in just a few days.

The crime rate is supposed to decrease as the year wanes, and colder weather keeps more people inside. But as recently as October 22nd, we noted that the homicide rate was 1.325 per day, and the projected total would be 485 for the year. Now the average has increased to 1.360 dead per day, which might not seem like much, but from October 21st through December 1st, a period of 41 days, 66 people bled to death in the streets, and that’s 1.61 per day. When the weather turned cooler, the homicide rate went up, not down. If the City of Brotherly Love keeps up with 1.61 per day, it could actually tie the 1990 record of 505, though maybe there’d be an * by the number since, being a leap year, 2020 has an extra day in which to kill people.

Of course, ” rel=”noopener” target=”_blank”>The Philadelphia Inquirer, a proud newspaper from its inception in 1829, and Pennsylvania’s newspaper of record, hasn’t even noticed the increased murder rate this fall. I searched the Inquirer’s website, and while there was a story which noted that shootings were up 53% from last year, I found nothing which indicated that the editors of the newspaper had noticed that the already high murder rate had ticked up a bit. They’ve been great on covering the election and its aftermath, and COVID-19, but when it comes to the daily killings in the city, well, that just isn’t news anymore.

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Social Justice Warrior vs Social Justice Warrior

Despite today’s Democrats not being working class friendly at all, labor unions have been a Democratic Party mainstay for decades. But it seems that the left’s having gone all-out #SocialJustice is putting them in conflict with labor unions. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Controversial tax abatement bill pits Philly building trades unions against concerns for immigrant workers

by Sean Collins Walsh | November 30, 2020 | 7:03 PM EST

Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez (D-Philadelphia) Public Domain, Link

A City Council bill designed to prevent unscrupulous contractors from receiving construction tax benefits sparked a debate about whether it could also open the door for a crackdown on undocumented workers in an unusually contentious committee hearing on Monday.At issue was a bill by Councilmember Bobby Henon that would prohibit projects using construction firms that improperly classify workers as independent contractors from qualifying for the city’s residential property tax abatement, which provides 10 years of tax benefits on the value of new construction and renovations.

“How do we ensure that the application of this isn’t discriminatory toward undocumented workers who have no recourse?” City Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez said during a Finance Committee hearing on the bill. “There’s no other way for the communities that I represent to see it any other way than they are potentially being targeted.”

After heated debate, the committee eventually approved the bill in a rare divided vote of 6-3, but not before Henon was forced to provide assurances that, before the bill comes to the Council floor for final passage, he would work to identify regulations that would ensure it does not endanger immigrant workers.

Bobby Henon used to be political director of Local 98 of the powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and Philadelphia is a union town. Unions have tried to retain a stranglehold on all construction in the city, and they make projects more difficult for non-union contractors. [1]This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few … Continue reading Kensington, where Maria Quiñones-Sánchez’s[2]While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of … Continue reading district is based, was 38.9% Hispanic according to the 2010 census. While the exact percentage of the population which is in the United States illegally isn’t known, in 2016, the Rev John Olenick, then pastor of Visitation Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) Roman Catholic Parish in Kensington, said that his “parish consists of many undocumented people from places like Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, [the] Dominican Republic, and other countries.” Visitation BVM Church celebrates one Mass in English on Sundays, but three Masses in Spanish, which lets you know just how busy the parish is.[3]According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have … Continue reading We may not know the exact percentage of legal vs illegal immigrants are in Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez’s district, but it’s clear that there are a lot of them.

Henon said the bill was not meant to target immigrants and that it was merely meant to ensure construction firms were following employment law.

“This is not penalizing workers in anyway. This is protecting workers,” he said. “I am always open to having a conversation to try to work out some of the unintended consequences with our Revenue Department.”

But Quiñones-Sánchez said that filing as an independent contractor is the only option available to undocumented immigrants — who make up between 15% and 25% of the local construction workforce, according to a 2018 estimate by the city controller — aside from working completely off the books.

Quiñones-Sánchez said if Henon was primarily interested in safety, he would propose a bill aimed at ensuring undocumented workers are protected by safety rules, not one that would keep them off job sites.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez has just pointed out, though I doubt she meant to do so, that the illegal immigrants haven’t broken the law only by having crossed into the United States illegally, but continue breaking the law, every day, because they have to work for a living, but they have to violate our employment and tax laws to do so. Either they are presenting forged documents to employers to work on the books, which is a felony, or they are working off the books, for cash, meaning that they are breaking our income tax laws, another felony.

Economically, labor unions bargain for higher wages through the law of supply and demand. If they can force a company or an industry to use only unionized workers, they have effectively reduced the supply of potential workers to the population of union members. For non-unionized workers, allowing illegal immigrants[4]I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally. to compete for jobs is to increase the supply of workers vis a vis the demand for them, which exerts negative pressure on wages in general.

Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez, a liberal Democrat, opposes the ideas of Mr Henon, another liberal Democrat, because, as will inevitably be the case, the goals of the #SocialJusticeWarriors are inevitably contradictory. I just enjoy watching them fighting with each other.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 This is something I have seen first hand, having jobsite experience while working for a non-union ready-mixed concrete supplier in the Philadelphia suburbs, while providing concrete for a few projects in the city itself. Unions can make it difficult for non-union workers to get to the jobsite, and concrete is a perishable product.
↑2 While the 2020 election in Pennsylvania was, according to the Democrats, completely free of fraud, Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez herself said that “the ward leaders opposing her have a history of Election Day shenanigans and campaign finance violations.” WHYY, the NPR station in Philadelphia, reported: “After the election, the city’s Board of Ethics found that the 7th Ward/Friends of Angel Cruz and Quiñones-Sánchez campaign committee had committed campaign finance violations for accepting excess contributions from other political committees.” Both campaigns, and Mrs Quiñones-Sánchez personally, had to pay fines levied by the city’s Ethics Board. Who knew that there were ever ethics in Philadelphia?
↑3 According to the church bulletin, the church has a Pastor, two Associate Pastors, another Redemptorist priest in residence, and a deacon. That’s more staffing than any parish of which I have been a member.
↑4 I do not use the mealy-mouthed adjective “undocumented” to soft-peddle the fact that such immigrants are here illegally.
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The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer asked for “radical new thinking” and “radical realism” I'm guessing that they won't like my "radical new thinking" and "radical realism"

About fifteen years ago, I worked for a ready-mixed concrete company in suburbs of Philadelphia, and one of my responsibilities was driver recruitment. The biggest problem? More than half of potential recruits couldn’t pass the drug test!

The greatest anti-poverty program is a job, and a huge percentage of those in poverty in Philadelphia have made themselves ineligible for decent jobs through their own choices to use drugs. Reducing poverty cannot come from the top down, from boards and commissions and charities. It must come from the bottom up, from a community which refuses to use drugs and will not tolerate those who sell drugs.

I know, I know, it’s just horribly politically incorrect to say this, but poor people are poor primarily due to their own choices.

Solving Philly’s poverty problem requires radical thinking — and realism | Editorial

The Inquirer Editorial Board | November 22, 2020 | 6:00 AM EST

One of the great challenges of living in a city with the high poverty rate that has long dogged Philadelphia is how to remain optimistic that the proposals designed to alleviate it can work.

The past few decades have seen many attempts to “solve” the poverty problem, both nationally and locally. Mayor John Street launched a $300 million anti-blight program called the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. In 2013, Mayor Michael Nutter launched the Shared Prosperity program, designed to streamline and maximize available aid to people. Both had their successes, but change in the poverty rate was incremental.

The latest effort, a “Poverty Action Plan” was released in early March from City Council and a committee including Darrell Clarke, Maria Quiñones Sanchez and Allan Domb. Last week, Council announced the creation of a new nonprofit to implement the plan, funded with a $10 million grant from the city.

The plan, originally described as a “moonshot” designed to lift 100,000 people out of poverty by 2024, offers a set of sweeping actions: seven strategies that range from providing a basic income to individuals and wage tax refunds to adult education and job training stipends. It creates a Poverty Commission, described as a public-private partnership including city and state government, philanthropies, universities and civic institutions like the United Way. In addition to a fund, it creates a dashboard to measure progress.

The commission also assembled a staggering number of people: five co-chairs, 19 full committee members, and 57 additional people spread over three separate committees.

So, 81 people, probably none of them truly poor themselves, involving government employees, philanthropies, universities and civic institutions. Philadelphia is going to have yet another anti-poverty program put together and run by the elites, most, and possibly all of whom have never been poor, have never, to use the expression of Robert E Howard, had their lives nailed to their spines, trying to put together a program for people who are not like them.

Many are familiar names who have been at the front lines of fighting poverty for years, if not decades. While it will take a large, all-hands-on-deck effort to make inroads, it is of concern that, especially in this town, many people means many politics, and many often-conflicting agendas. And the last eight months have complicated things further, since many organizations will be fighting for their own survival.

Translation: the same people who have “been at the front lines of fighting poverty for years, if not decades,” and failed, will be at it again. Is there any reason to expect different results?

Part of leadership is setting goals that are slightly out of reach. But leadership must also recognize that there needs to be a possibility of success, especially confronting complicated problems like poverty. Lifting 100,000 people out of poverty will take vision and optimism. But it will also take a lot more than $10 million – and a lot longer than four years. Solving this crisis requires a capacity for radical new thinking as well as radical realism.

“Radical new thinking as well as radical realism”? I can provide the Inquirer Editorial Board with that, but I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t like it. But perhaps, just perhaps, some actual plainspokenness is needed here.

There are three things which have to be done to reduce poverty in Philadelphia, and they need to come from within the poorer, primarily black, communities.

  1. People have to stop using drugs! The Philadelphia Police can only do so much to find, stop and arrest drug dealers. Drug dealers exist because people want to use drugs, and they will continue to exist as long as people are willing to buy and use drugs. But drugs lead to lost employment opportunities as employees in a lot of fields are subject to pre-employment, random and post-accident drug tests, as well as lowered productivity when on the job even if applicants get past the drug screens. Drug use leads to other poor lifestyle decisions, and syphons money from people’s earnings into useless spending which does not improve their situations or enable them to save.The neighborhood has to take action that the police cannot, to drive out the drug dealers and give them no shelter or security. The dealers need to be shunned as the neighborhood cancers they are.
  2. Neighborhood women and girls need to step up and take leadership roles. Most of the bad behavior, from petty crimes all the way up to Philadelphia’s exploding murder rate, comes from young males, and, if we are brutally honest about it, young black males. But there is one thing that young males value more than anything else: sex. Young women in poor neighborhoods need to stop rewarding the bad behavior of young males with sex. The guys who stay in school, the ones who try to make something of themselves, they are the ones that young women in the neighborhoods should date.This is something that their mothers, and the other older women in the neighborhoods, need to stress to younger women as they grow up.

    This point will be denounced as horribly sexist, but I am far beyond caring about that. You may think it sexist, but it is true nevertheless.

  3. Fathers in the neighborhood must step up and take responsibility. Almost every negative social statistic, for suicides, for criminal behavior, for dropping out of school, and for out-of-wedlock childbearing, is much higher for people who grow up without their fathers present in the home. Young women should not date young men who are unlikely to stick around if the woman gets pregnant, and young women should not let themselves get pregnant by men to whom they are not married. Single parenthood is very often a one-way ticket to poverty, at far greater rates than are the case for two-parent homes.Again, that point will be condemned as sexist, but there is one incontrovertible fact: pregnancy and child rearing put a much greater burden on women than men, and if the man is absent, 100% of the burden falls on the woman. Men who impregnate women and then refuse to step up and do their duty as fathers need to be shunned in the neighborhoods.

There are many other behaviors that only people in the neighborhoods can fix, only the individuals involved can change, but they are all part of the three points made above. The various ‘civic leaders’ the Editorial Board mentioned can stress these things, but only the people on the ground in their neighborhoods can actually change behavior.

Readers can denounce me as sexist or racist or whateverist, but it doesn’t matter to me; I am retired, living out in the country, and I can’t be fired for writing something some people will find uncomfortable. Because uncomfortable or not, the points I have made are true, and any rational examination of the facts will bring the reader to the same conclusions.

This is the “radical new thinking” and “radical realism” the Inquirer’s Editorial Board wanted. That it is not #woke, nor sufficiently sparing of the feelings of some, that it is horribly politically incorrect does not mean it should not be examined for whether it is true or not. That it puts much of the blame for poverty on the behavior of the poor will be seen as unjustifiably harsh, but harsh or not, it is still true.

Poor behavior leads to unfortunate consequences, consequences which are often far beyond what people would like to believe. No well-intentioned committee of 81 committed fighters against poverty, no brilliant Mayor of perfectly good motivations, and no priest nobly absolving parishioners of their confessed sins can change the consequences of poor and economically inefficient behavior.

The solution to poverty can be encouraged by all of those people, but the implementation of the solution has to come from the people in poor communities themselves.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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The shutdowns are about more than just missing some Christmas presents

While I have noted the complaints of Lexington restaurateurs in response to Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) three-week indoor dining ban, Kentucky isn’t the only place in which government’s over-zealous response to COVID-19 is destroying businesses and throwing people out of work. Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) has done even worse. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Six-week shutdown could mean a ‘year without Christmas’ for Philly businesses

by Sam Wood and Katie Park | November 18, 2020

Beleaguered business owners and city residents, who had reconfigured their work lives to survive the pandemic’s first wave, latched onto a now-ubiquitous sentiment on Tuesday: Hang on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

The City of Philadelphia imposed new business restrictions on Monday that will go into effect at the end of the week. Sectors of the local economy will be required to shut down or severely curtail operations until at least Jan. 1.

Until New years Day? Even Governor Beshear only ordered closure for three weeks, at which point he could, conceivably, reissue the restrictions, while Mr Kenney decided he’d just destroy the rest of the year.

“For millions of people, this could be the year without a Christmas,” said Stephen Mullin, principal at Econsult Solutions and a former city director of commerce during the Rendell administration. “We’ll see unemployment bouncing up significantly again.”

The poor will be hit disproportionately as minimum wage jobs in retail, hospitality, and restaurants disappear, he predicted. The next six weeks will be tougher than in the spring and will probably endure into the new year. And businesses are pushing back and taking their complaints directly to City Hall.

With a salary of $218,000, Mr Kenney isn’t worried that COVID-19 shutdowns will put him in the poorhouse; that’s reserved for the working class people. He’s been in city government for most of his adult life, spending 23 years as a city councilman before being elected mayor; government is really the only thing he knows. Being on the wrong side of government edicts and regulations? That’s something he does not know.

The shutdown order comes at a critical time. It’s only with the holiday shopping season that many retailers begin to generate their best sales of the year. The order also puts a kibosh on Christmas parties and the peak of tourism in Philadelphia.

Translation: Jeff Bezos will get even richer, as more and more people will be shopping online, while ‘brick-and-mortar’ stores will suffer, many completely failing, and their employees will be laid off from jobs which will never return.[1]Restaurants are frequent business failures, which are followed by subsequent restaurant start-ups. But in the current economic and regulatory climate, the next wave of restaurant start ups will be … Continue reading Property owners will not be paid the rent they are due, which means that some property maintenance will not get done.

There’s a lot more at the original, including noting that Center City shops have lost a tremendous amount of business, because telecommuting has dramatically reduced the number of office workers. Office occupancy, the story stated, is down 85% from prior to the outbreak.

But this personal story is the one which really needs to be quoted:

Fran Cassidy, general manager of the Sporting Club at the Bellevue, was furious at the shutdown orders, which he considers unnecessarily draconian.

Business at the luxury fitness center had already crashed to 50% of its pre-pandemic level, Cassidy said. Of his 4,200 members, just 2,000 had returned. Though he believes there “hasn’t been a single case of COVID-19 among his clients,” he will have to issue pink slips to the Sporting Club’s entire staff.

“They’re devastated. How can you not be? It’s the holiday season. We had to tell 90 employees they’d be laid off,” Cassidy said. “In eight or nine days, it’ll be Thanksgiving. And that’s the news we had to deliver.”

Perhaps ninety employees from one business makes more of an impact than twenty million people on unemployment. Twenty million is a number that starts to fall outside of people’s consciousness, but ninety, that’s 45 to 50 homes. Where I lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, I can see that as the entire street from my former house to the beginning of the street. That’s a number of houses that I could see, every day, on my way home from work. That’s a number that I can visualize, a number of houses I could see and recognize, a number of houses in which I knew or at least recognized people.

The street on which my family lived in Mt Sterling, when I was growing up? There are fewer than fifty houses on the entire street.

And that’s a number of houses that I could see dark, as they had to conserve electricity,[2]Many states have banned utility shutoffs for non-payment due to the economic crisis, but eventually that will end, and eventually people will have to repay their back bills. that’s a number of houses I could see having potatoes and beans for supper one night, and beans and potatoes the next, because the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), what used to be called Food Stamps, doesn’t really feed a family all that well.

What happens when the hot water heater fails? A no-eviction order means that the tenants can’t be put out on the street, but can a landlord who has not been receiving his rent be forced to repair or replace it if he has no money? A no-foreclosure order might mean that a family can’t be evicted if they haven’t been able to pay their mortgage, but if they have lost their jobs, can they afford a new hot water heater? A quick look at Lowe’s website showed it’s least expensive hot water heater cost $319.00.

In Pennsylvania, if your automobile insurance lapses, the insurance company is required, by law, to report it to the state, and your license plates are immediately suspended for a minimum of ninety days, unless you can present proof that you kept your insurance by contracting with another company before the old insurance lapsed. If you have an insurance payment of $300 due, and you don’t have it, too bad, so sad, must suck to be you, but your plates are suspended. Since the Commonwealth stopped issuing license plate stickers and went to automatic scanners in patrol cars, the police will see you if you are driving with expired or suspended plates.

Very few of the elites, and big city mayors and state governors are most certainly among the elites, really understand what it is like to be poor, what it is like to live paycheck-to-paycheck, and how even a single setback can throw people into a deep hole. The Federal reserve reported, in 2019:

  • If faced with an unexpected expense of $400, 61 percent of adults say they would cover it with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement — a modest improvement from the prior year. Similar to the prior year, 27 percent would borrow or sell something to pay for the expense, and 12 percent would not be able to cover the expense at all.
  • Seventeen percent of adults are not able to pay all of their current month’s bills in full. Another 12 percent of adults would be unable to pay their current month’s bills if they also had an unexpected $400 expense that they had to pay

Perhaps the math are too complicated for the elites, but $400 is a full week’s gross pay for someone earning $10.00 an hour, but Mayor Kenney is throwing exactly those people out of work not for a week, but for six weeks. Doing the more complicated math, adding in the 7.65% Social Security and Medicare withholding, Pennsylvania’s 3.07% state income tax withholding, and Philly’s 3.8712% wage tax for city residents, a person needs to be paid $11.53 per hour to take home $400 for a forty hour week.

COVID-19 is serious, and in some cases — not many — can be fatal. But poverty is serious, and unemployment can be fatal in itself. For the people who needn’t fear the economic consequences of shutdown orders themselves, it’s quite easy to say that these shutdowns are necessary, and something through which we just have to fight. But for the people who do bear the consequences of the shutdowns, it’s more than just losing Thanksgiving dinner due to gathering restriction orders, more than no presents under the Christmas tree, it’s a big government boot stomping into a life already lived at the hard edge of survival.
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Thanks to Robert Stacy McCain for the link!
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Restaurants are frequent business failures, which are followed by subsequent restaurant start-ups. But in the current economic and regulatory climate, the next wave of restaurant start ups will be long delayed.
↑2 Many states have banned utility shutoffs for non-payment due to the economic crisis, but eventually that will end, and eventually people will have to repay their back bills.
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George Soros is still spending money to destroy responsible civilization Just like with Larry Krasner, he's dumping money into 'social justice' prosecutors

We have previously noted that Larry Krasner, then a Democratic candidate for District Attorney in Philadelphia, received a lot of money from billionaire America-hater George Soros in his 2017 campaign.

Philadelphia had plenty of experience in treating criminals leniently, and then being shocked, shocked! when criminals who could have and should have been behind bars at the time upped their game to shooting police officers.

Larry Krasner won the election to become District Attorney in Philadelphia in 2017, and was the beneficiary of a huge campaign contribution from leftist billionaire George Soros, is a leftist who hates the police and doesn’t pursue supposedly petty offenses, and ran on a platform saying he would:

  • Stop prosecuting insufficient and insignificant cases
  • Review past convictions, free the wrongfully convicted
  • Stop cash bail imprisonment
  • Treat addiction as an illness, not a crime
  • Protect immigrants while protecting everybody
  • Reject a return to the failed drug wars of the past
  • Stand up to police misconduct

The wholly predictable results? In 2018, Mr Krasner’s first year in office, city homicides jumped from 315 to 353, a 12.06% increase. The following year, homicides held almost steady, rising to 356, but this year, 428 people have been murdered in the city, as of 11:59 PM EST on November 12th, a 40% increase over the same day last year, good for 7th place all time in Philadelphia’s homicide history . . . with 49 days left in the year.

But, it seems that some people like lax law enforcement, regardless of how many dead bodies it leaves on the streets. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Retired Philly cops looking to unseat Larry Krasner lose first battle with billionaire George Soros

by Chris Brennan | November 13, 2020 | 5:00 AM EST

A political action committee organized this summer by retired Philadelphia police officers eager to oust District Attorney Larry Krasner next year said it supported 69 candidates in 17 states in last week’s election.

And while Protect Our Police PAC says 38 of those candidates won, it lost its first face-off with billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros.

Soros, who spent almost $1.7 million to help Krasner win the 2017 Democratic primary election, gave $244,000 to a Georgia PAC backing Shalena Cook Jones, who defeated two-term Republican Chatham County (Savannah) District Attorney Meg Heap.

The Protect Our Police PAC took heat in the race, with complaints that a billboard it posted was racist because it made it seem Jones supported violent protest (Jones is Black, Heap is white) and that mailers attacking Soros’ involvement were anti-Semitic. The PAC denounced those as “false accusations meant to discredit and distract” and said, “We unequivocally denounce racism and anti-Semitism.”

PAC president Nick Gerace feels confident about 2021, vowing to “counter George Soros’ efforts to elect weak prosecutors who too often side with criminals rather than victims.”

The PAC gave $50,000 last month to State Rep. Martina White, Philadelphia’s only Republican state legislator and a regular Krasner foe. It also sent mailers to retired cops supporting the reelection of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, an occasional Krasner foe.

Krasner has shrugged off the PAC so far, dismissing in an August fund-raising email the idea that “no one should ever challenge the thin blue line, no matter the abuse or discrimination that occurs in our communities.”

“(T)he abuse or discrimination that occurs in our communities”? A skyrocketing murder rate, aided by Mr Krasner’s lenient treatment of lower level crimes, doesn’t constitute abuse?

Oh, well, I guess that it doesn’t count as racial discrimination when one black guy kills another black guy, the most common description of murder in the City of Brotherly Love, does it?

Mr Soros was born on August 12, 1930, making him 90 years old now. His mission in life appears to be to destroy responsible civilization by backing ‘social justice’ causes, and Mr Krasner is right there, serving as one of his accomplices.
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The killing of a black man in Philadelphia is as commonplace as a traffic jam on the Schuylkill Expressway.

The main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website listed, at 2:45 PM EST, the following stories:

Five main page stories referencing race.

You know what wasn’t on the main page? Not one single story about the black men being killed on the streets of the City of Brotherly Love. According to the Philadelphia Police Department, as of 11:59 PM EST on November 10th, 427 people have bled out their life’s blood in the city’s streets so far this year, a 40% increase over the same day last year. Those 427 homicides are good for 7th place all time on Philly’s homicide list . . . with 51 days left in the year. With a rate of 1.356 killings per day, Philadelphia is on track for 69 more homicides in 2020, for a grand total of 496, which would easily push 1989’s 489 murders out of the way for 2nd place.

But, not to worry: 1990’s record of 505 seems out of reach.

Maybe, like Roger Maris’ 61 home runs in 1961, they’ll put an asterisk beside this year’s 2nd place finish, given that it’s a leap year, and Philly had an extra day for mayhem.

According to the Philadelphia shootings victims dashboard, 244 out of 295 fatal shootings in the city (as of November 8nd) were of black males; that’s 82.7%. Yet if there has been a story about this in the Inquirer, I have missed it.

I did, however, find this Letter to the Editor:

Letter: Do black lives matter to the Philly media?

by Will O’Brien, Philadelphia | Posted: March 22, 2016 | 3:01 AM EDT

Do black lives matter to media?

A recent stabbing in Rittenhouse Square was certainly tragic, and I grieve for the family and friends of the victim (“Rittenhouse Stabbing Arrest,” Tuesday). But I have to express my frustration that, once again, the murder of a white person merits front-page coverage as well as follow-up stories, updates on the arrest, and almost certainly coverage of the trial months from now. At the same time, numerous murders in communities of color are relegated to the back pages, often with little more than a paragraph – and practically never with follow-up stories.

One local television newscast started with cursory coverage of two killings in an African American neighborhood before leading into the Rittenhouse Square incident with “But the big story tonight . . .” And it continued to be a lead story several days later.

This has been the infuriating and persistent pattern in the Inquirer and other Philadelphia media for all of the 30 years I have lived here. This sends a very strong message that white lives are more valuable than black and Latino lives. The death of a white person is seen as more important, more newsworthy, and more tragic than the death of a person of color. This is precisely why the Black Lives Matter movement is urgently needed and why many white people’s response that “all lives matter” is a milquetoast assertion that ignores harsh social realities.

Our media must do better by not playing into and even affirming long-standing racist attitudes that have wounded our society for too long.

Since Mr O’Brien has lived in Philadelphia for 30 years, he must remember the days and days coverage of the murder of Cute Little White Girl Rian Thal.

His letter was 4½ years ago, before George Floyd, before Breonna Taylor and before Walter Wallace, all heavily covered by the Inquirer and the rest of the credentialed media. Their killings were covered because they wound up being political flashpoints.

But the hundreds of black Philadelphians, primarily black males? Unless the victim was a Somebody, the Inquirer didn’t care. If the victim is a white male, and the shooting probably accidental, yeah, that merits not just one but two stories.

Mr O’Brien’s letter was written in 2016, when the city saw 277 homicides. Philly left that total in the dust somewhere around August 18th. I did not note the date that homicide #277 occurred, but noted that at the end of August 17th there had been 276 homicides.

As of 11:59 PM EDT yesterday (August 17, 2020), 276 homicides were recorded in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s a 31% increase over the same day last year, more than the entire year’s murder totals in 2013 and 2014, and just one fewer than the entire year total for 2016.¹

In 230 days, Philadelphia has seen 276 homicides. That’s 1.2 murders per day. With 136 days remaining, if the average holds, that’s an additional 163 homicides, for a projected total of 439 people.

I don’t know how many gang-bangers in Philadelphia read The First Street Journal or my stories on RedState, but sometimes it seems that they’ve taken what I’ve written as a personal challenge. Philadelphia’s good citizens raised that 1.2 homicides per day in mid-August to 1.356 by the 10th of November, not quite three months, and the projected total from 439 to 496.

Mr O’Brien asked, “Do black lives matter to (the Philadelphia) media?” The short answer is no, they don’t matter, because, to be very blunt about it, another black man dying in Philly’s streets just isn’t news anymore. The murder of a black man in the city is as commonplace an event as a traffic jam on the Schuylkill Expressway.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Korean businesses matter, too!

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page is only updated “during normal business hours, Monday through Friday,” so it was no surprise to me that, at 10:05 AM EST on Sunday morning, the same number of homicides that was specified on Friday, 411, was still showing. And when I checked the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website, though there were follow-up stories on the death of Walter Wallace, Jr, the knife-wielding man who was advancing on two police officers, I did not find a single story indicating that anyone else had been murdered on the city’s frequently bloody streets.

But I did find one story about racism related to the death of Mr Wallace:

Korean American business owners, among hardest hit by looters, feel victimized and alone

by Sam Wood | October 31, 2020 | 5:01 AM EDT

For many of the nearly 100 beauty supply stores in Philadelphia, it was another rough week.

From Monday to Wednesday, thieves and vandals broke into at least 17 stores, making off with merchandise and even store fixtures. The losses were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In some cases, thieves struck again at shops that were damaged previously during a more widespread outbreak of looting that flared in May after police in Minneapolis killed a man there. The damage and theft this week erupted after news broke Monday of how police had shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr. in West Philadelphia.

“Some owners tried to call the police, but they didn’t respond,” said Sharon Hartz, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Philadelphia, an advocacy organization for many of those who operate the supply shops. “A few had a chance to get police but when they came, they dismissed it. Groups of 20 to 30 people came to loot at a time. It was scary.”

Her group provided a count of damaged shops. “Some of the stores, they’re thinking of closing down for good,” she said.

A count, I would note, that was not included in the Inquirer story.

I have to admit: I wonder about the job of Sam Wood, the reporter who wrote the article, and the editor who approved it, because it implies the question of racism against Korean business owners by the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators. Remember: Stan Wischnowski, 58, was fired resigned as senior vice-president and executive editor of the Inquirer, following a newsroom protest reminiscent of the rebellion of the #woke at The New York Times that got OpEd section editor James Bennet fired to resign following his decision to allow a sitting United States Senator to publish an OpEd piece the #woke didn’t like, after the headline “Buildings Matter, Too” was used in an article on the loss of historic architecture in the riots over the death of drug-addled convicted felon George Floyd in Minneapolis.

I picked “Korean Businesses Matter, Too” as the headline for this article after writing the previous paragraph. Claira Janover could not be reached for comment.

There’s considerably more at the Inquirer original, noting that businessmen of Korean descent in the city were afraid for their businesses, many having been looted, and that some of them have hired private security, a business expense they certainly do not want, and that at least a few have been camping out in their businesses, armed with handguns and shotguns to protect themselves from looters.

The article may have given us a few facts, but it was also an example of poor journalism. Not only did it fail to give us the number of businesses damaged, even though it stated that the number was provided, but it failed to provide any links to its sources among the Korean American Association of Greater Philadelphia and the Korean American Chamber of Commerce for Philadelphia. It did not address whether Korean-owned businesses are being singled out more than businesses owned by those of other racial or ethnic groups, nor tell us whether Korean-owned businesses are more heavily concentrated in black neighborhoods, nor tell us how prevalent other-than-black-owned businesses are in predominantly black neighborhoods. Given that Asian, and particularly Korean, owned businesses were heavily targeted during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, that seems like a particularly glaring journalistic lapse.

Nor does the story address that most glaring of politically incorrect facts: what percentage of the looters destroying these Korean businesses are black? In a story about racial unrest, wouldn’t the information about race be considered part of the story?

Of course, I am mocking current editorial standards in the credentialed media. Editors decided, many years ago, to not include racial statistics in any form that might contribute to racism. Walter Wallace, Jr, could be identified as black, because he was the victim of a almost certainly justified shooting by police officers. The victims of the looting being identified as Korean-Americans? Again, they were the victims. But perpetrators of crimes? They must not be identified by race, because that could lead to bad impressions based on race, to racial stereotypes being formed.

So there we have it: good, complete journalism is being squashed because good people don’t want to tell you a bad truth, because bad truths might result in, horrors! bad opinions, or even Thoughtcrime.

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The proper way to deal with the not-so-peaceful parts of Mostly Peaceful Protests™

We already know that District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) hates the police and will not seriously prosecute #BlackLivesMatter protesters who break the law and destroy property, so, to do the right thing, unfortunately, requires that the feds take action. It’s a good thing it was Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton appointing United States Attorneys! From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Arson charges against prominent West Philly activist draw swift rebuke from protest movement

by Jeremy Roebuck, Posted: October 29, 2020- 10:43 AM

A federal indictment charging a prominent West Philadelphia activist and two others with setting a police car on fire during racial injustice protests this spring was unsealed Thursday, drawing a swift response from protesters and lawyers who questioned the nature and timing of their arrests.

The filing, though sparse on details, alleges Anthony Smith — a social studies teacher and one of the lead organizers of the Philadelphia Coalition for Racial and Economic Legal Justice (Philly for REAL Justice) — was involved in burning a police vehicle during demonstrations outside City Hall on May 30 in reaction to the police killing of George Floyd.

But the document does not indicate whether prosecutors believe Smith, 29, actually set the blaze or assisted those who did or whether they have evidence to suggest he was working in coordination with the other two men charged — Carlos Matchett and Khalif Miller — or any wider group.

All three face charges arson charges that carry a seven-year mandatory minimum sentence upon conviction. They have also been charged with obstructing law enforcement during a civil disorder — under a rarely used before this year civil disorder statute that was enacted during the Nixon administration’s efforts to crack down on anti-war and Black Power movements in the late 1960s. They remain in custody pending court appearances later this week.

The .pdf file of the indictment is here.

U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain, who we have previously noted has clashed with Mr Krasner before, released the indictment by grand jury. The Usual Suspects complained about the timing, just a few days prior to the presidential election, and during the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ over the killing of Walter Wallace, Jr, by two Philadelphia police officers as he approached them with a knife that he refused to drop.

Smith’s attorney, Paul Hetznecker, balked at what he described as “the blatant political nature of this prosecution,” noting that his client was arrested less than a week before Election Day for crimes that allegedly occurred five months ago.

“Utilizing the awesome power of the federal government to target activists and select them for federal prosecution during one of the most important social justice movements in our history sends a dangerous message,” he said. “The prosecution of my client, Anthony Smith, a respected teacher and political activist, is part of a broader effort by this administration to criminalize and quell dissent expressed by progressive political movements.”

If Mr Smith truly was involved in the arson of a Philadelphia Police Department vehicle, then he is not only not a “respected teacher,” but is not a person who should be teaching young people at all. What, I have to ask, is Mr Smith teaching his students?

There was a scene on the television series Blue Bloods, in which a leftist teacher was causing problems for Nikki Reagan-Boyle. The fictional student and her mother met with the fictional teacher in the fictional Catholic high school, and there was a picture of Che Guevara on the wall. I laughed at the obvious political message of the program, that one would ever suppose that a parochial school would allow a teacher to have Señor Guevara’s photo displayed, but it does make me wonder what some public school teachers, whose unions are essentially Democratic Party operatives, are teaching their students.

Mr Hetznecker was appalled that the indictment was for crimes that allegedly occurred five months ago? The indictment was brought via a grand jury, something that takes time. Mr McSwain could not move before the indictment was delivered.

Does it send to Philadelphia voters the message that President Trump will try to protect people from lawlessness? I very much hope so!

Since May when Floyd’s death in Minneapolis sparked demonstrations across the country, Attorney General William Barr has urged U.S. attorneys to pursue cases against “violent rioters” using specific charges like the ones deployed against Smith, Matchett and Miller on Thursday.

Nationwide, federal prosecutors have lodged more than 300 felony cases against defendants espousing both progressive and right-wing ideologies connected to the demonstrations, with 20 of them in Pennsylvania, according to research by The Prosecution Project, which has tracked protest-related arrests.

Note the media bias in that paragraph. “(B)oth progressive and right-wing ideologies” would not be politically loaded had it been formulated “both left-wing and right-wing ideologies” or “both progressive and conservative ideologies,” but the way the Inquirer phrased it, bias is indicated.

Of course, if the Justice Department is pursuing cases against both left and right in riot cases, that isn’t bias, other than the structural bias that conservatives are much more likely to do something really radical, and not riot.

In June, FBI agents arrested Germantown massage therapist Lore-Elisabeth Blumenthal, alleging she set fire to two police cars parked outside City Hall during the same demonstration during which Smith, Matchett and Miller are accused of committing crimes.

It’s good that they nailed Miss Blumenthal early on; it’s unfortunate that the cases against Messrs Smith, Matchett and Miller took as long as they did, but, if they are guilty, it will be good to see justice eventually being done.
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This is what ‘Social Justice’ law enforcement gets us

The Philadelphia Police Department Current Crime Statistics page, which is only updated on weekdays, tells us that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, October 25th, there have been 399 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. That’s a 40.99% increase over the same date in 2019, and 2019 saw the most homicides in Philly since 2007. That’s 399 homicides on the 299th day of the year. We had previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer took no notice of murders in the black community, and at least as of 11:05 AM, the Inquirer’s website main page showed no articles noting the bloody weekend in the city.

Maybe the editors are waiting to break the 400 killings mark?

Doing the math, 399 homicides in 299 days equals 1.334 per day, up from 1.324 just ten days ago. As the weather cools down, homicide rates normally drop somewhat, but not in Philadelphia. With 67 days remaining in 2020, 89 more homicides would be expected if the current rate continues, for a total of 488, just shy of the second place number of 489 in 1989. I suppose that breaking the record of 505 in 1990 is out of reach by now, but with District Attorney Larry Krasner giving petty criminals slaps on the wrist — if even that much — the thugs are out on the street, able to escalate to bigger crimes, who knows, maybe they can break the record.

Mr Krasner’s Twitter page has his self-declared bio: “District Attorney Larry Krasner fights for equal justice for the great people of Philadelphia. A fair and effective criminal justice system makes us safer.” With city homicides increasing every year that he has been in office — 353 in 2018, up from 315 the previous year, then 356 in 2019, not a terribly big jump, and now 399 so far in 2020, with slightly over two months left to go — how, I have to ask, has the “effective criminal justice system” under the District Attorney made the city “safer”?

I’ve harped about Mr Krasner’s idiocy often enough that it doesn’t bear repeating. So, this time, I’ll quote from his Wikipedia biography:

Lawrence Samuel Krasner (born March 30, 1961) is an American lawyer serving as the 26th District Attorney of Philadelphia.[1] Elected to the position in 2017, Krasner campaigned on a platform to reform elements of the criminal justice system, including to reduce incarceration, and took office in January 2018.

During his tenure, Krasner has sought to spearhead criminal justice reform by ending bail payments for low-level offenders, reducing supervision for parolees, and seeking more lenient sentences for certain crimes.[2] Prior to his government service, Krasner had a 30-year career as a criminal defense and civil rights attorney and public defender. He aggressively pursued police misconduct.[3] . . .

Krasner’s representation of Black Lives Matter and Occupy Philadelphia members led many to call him an “anti-establishment” candidate during his 2017 primary campaign for the Democratic nomination.[10][11] He campaigned against existing policies that had resulted in disproportionately high numbers of minority males being jailed and proposed other reforms in criminal justice.[12] Krasner was a featured speaker at the 2017 People’s Summit.[13].  .  .  .

Shortly before the candidacy announcement, John McNesby, president of Lodge 5 of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, derided Krasner’s eventually successful run as “hilarious.” McNesby opposed Krasner’s promise to refuse to prosecute defendants whose detainments were illegally performed so arresting officers could earn overtime pay as well as his history of suing police officers who perpetrated corruption and brutality.[16] Krasner received no major newspaper endorsements.[1] Less than three weeks before the primary, a political action committee supporting Krasner’s campaign received a $1.45 million contribution from billionaire George Soros.[17].  .  .  .

In his first week in office, Krasner fired 31 prosecutors from the District Attorney’s Office, including both junior and career supervisory staff. Up to one-third of the homicide prosecutors in the office were dismissed. Those fired represented nearly a 10% reduction in the number of Philadelphia assistant district attorneys.[25][26]

In February 2018, Krasner announced that law enforcement would no longer pursue criminal charges against those caught with marijuana possession.[27] That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop seeking cash bail for those accused of some misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.[28] Krasner said that it was unfair to keep people in detention simply because they could not afford bail.[28] He also announced that the DA’s office had filed a lawsuit against a number of pharmaceutical companies for their role in the city’s opioid epidemic.[27] Krasner instructed prosecutors to stop charging sex workers who had fewer than three convictions.[29]

In March 2018, it was reported that Krasner’s staffers were working on creating a sentence review unit–the first of its kind in the country–to review past cases and sentences, and seek re-sentencing in cases when individuals were given unduly harsh punishments.[30] That same month, Krasner instructed prosecutors to reduce sentence lengths to defendants making pleas, refuse to bring certain low-level charges, and publicly explain their reasoning for pursuing expensive incarcerations to taxpayers footing the bills.[31] He said,

“Fiscal responsibility is a justice issue, and it is an urgent justice issue. A dollar spent on incarceration should be worth it. Otherwise, that dollar may be better spent on addiction treatment, on public education, on policing and on other types of activity that make us all safer.”[32]

In 2018, some judges rejected the reduced sentences which Krasner’s prosecutors had sought for juveniles who had previously been sentenced to life in prison.[33] In June 2018, Krasner made an unprecedented request for a comprehensive list of police officers who had lied while on duty, used excessive force, racially profiled, or violated civil rights, an unprecedented move in order to spotlight dishonest police officers and check their future courtroom testimony.[34]

In 2019, Krasner filed a motion in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania to declare capital punishment in Pennsylvania unconstitutional. He claimed the death penalty was illegal in the state because of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Pennsylvania Constitution, citing the high turnover rates of convictions by appeals, the racially biased number of sentences given to black and Hispanic defendants, and the large number of convictions overturned due to ineffective counsel.[35]

Following the fatal shooting of Philadelphia police officer James O’Connor IV, Krasner faced criticism from William McSwain, a federal prosecutor appointed by Donald Trump.[36] McSwain, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, blamed the shooting on a prosecutorial discretion decision by Krasner’s office to drop drug charges against suspected killer Hassan Elliott. While on probation for a gun possession charge, Elliott was arrested again on January 29, 2019, for cocaine possession and was released on his own recognizance. Nearly a week later on February 6, Elliott took part in the fatal shooting of Tyrone Tyree. Krasner’s office dropped drug charges after Elliott failed to appear in court, choosing to approve an arrest warrant for Tyree’s murder instead.[36] On March 13, as part of a SWAT unit carrying out an arrest warrant, O’Connor was fatally shot and Elliott was charged. Prosecutor spokeswoman Jane Roh responded to criticism by stating that the office believed murder to be a more serious crime than drug possession and charged Elliott accordingly.[37] On the night of O’Connor’s death, John McNesby ordered activist police to form a human chain at Temple University Hospital entrance to prevent Krasner from entering.[37]

In July 2020, Krasner’s office charged Philadelphia SWAT officer Richard P. Nicoletti with simple assault, reckless endangerment, official oppression, and possession of an instrument of crime. Video footage taken during the George Floyd protests showed that Nicoletti pepper sprayed three kneeling protesters. He pulled down the mask of one woman before spraying her in the face, he sprayed another woman at point blank range, and sprayed a man numerous times in the face while he laid on the ground.[38]

Simply put, Mr Krasner, who hated the police from the beginning, installed a form of ‘social justice’ law enforcement; he was tougher on the police than he was on criminals. He was oh-so-concerned that “disproportionately high numbers of minority males” were charged, convicted and incarcerated, without ever thinking to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, “disproportionately high numbers of minority males” were the ones committing crimes.

There are two kinds of crimes: crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals. When your city is stuck with a District Attorney like Mr Krasner, who doesn’t believe in prosecuting criminals, or sentencing them harshly when they are prosecuted and convicted, what reason is there to report that you were robbed?

But murder is different: it is a crime of evidence. It isn’t easy to dispose of a dead body in a way that it won’t be found, especially if you haven’t carefully planned things. You’re looking at 100 to 300 pounds of dead meat, bone and fat, and something which will put off a strong and nasty odor after very little time. The vast majority of dead bodies get found.

Of course, in Philadelphia, a whole lot of murders are open and in public: drive up or drive by shootings, essentially public executions, in which the shooters are only concerned with escape, not hiding the fact that someone was killed.

So when I read that most crime had decreased in Philadelphia, I just flat don’t believe it. Murder isn’t normally an entry-level crime; guys who shoot other people have usually been bad guys before that. And if they’ve been bad guys before that, Mr Krasner doesn’t really believe in getting them locked up for long anyway.

So, when we note that 77.86% of fatal shootings in the city since 2015 were of black males and another 5.01% of black females, (as of October 22, 2020), and know that 88.5% of black homicide victims were killed by black assailants, it becomes pretty obvious that, at least when it comes to murder in Murder City, USA, the killings are by a “disproportionately high numbers of minority males.”

But the esteemed Mr Krasner appears to want to have none of that! He’s more concerned with not having racial disparate numbers of minority members convicted as criminals than he is of helping to make the city safer.

This is what happens when “social justice” is one of your driving motivations. The police and the prosecutors need to just find, apprehend, try and convict offenders regardless of racial considerations.  When you don’t do that, you wind up with, well, with Philadelphia.
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