Tag Archives: #PhiladelphiaInquirer

Posted on by

With Donald Trump out of office, The Philadelphia Inquirer thinks nothing of publicizing criminality, knowing it won’t be punished

One way that you can tell that Donald Trump is no longer President of the United States is to read The Philadelphia Inquirer:

An undocumented house cleaner loses her job in Philly, but finds her mission

Altagracia Maria Herrera is an undocumented house cleaner who was excluded from most government aid, making the pandemic the first time she felt she didn’t belong in the United States.

By Robin Shulman | Monday, March 22, 2021

Altagracia María Herrera poses for a portrait outside of her home in Northeast Philadelphia on Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Herrera is an undocumented house cleaner who lost all her work during the pandemic. Photo by Heather Khalifa, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer

One night, as the pandemic shut Philadelphia down last March, Altagracia María Herrera, who cleans houses for a living, answered her phone.It was one of her employers, who, in broken Spanish, told her to stay home for the next few weeks, Herrera recalled.

“I understand,” responded Herrera, who was born in the Dominican Republic, lives in Northeast Philadelphia, and is a single parent to two U.S.-born daughters.

Then, over a few days, all her other cleaning jobs evaporated. Herrera had just enough saved to make her $750 rent. “After that, there was no money,” she said. As an undocumented immigrant, she didn’t qualify for relief from Washington — no stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, or ongoing salary funded by Paycheck Protection Program loans.

There’s much more at the original, but one thing is clear: she feels that she doesn’t belong in the United States because she really doesn’t belong in the United States. She is, the story tells us, “an undocumented immigrant,” the mealy-mouthed, Associated Press Stylebook term for an illegal immigrant, someone who is not an American citizen, someone who sneaked across the border illegally, someone who broke the law!

When Mr Trump was President, the Inquirer would never have printed her name, or noted that she lived somewhere in Northeast Philadelphia, or pointed out, in the photograph caption, that she was in the city on Wednesday, March 10, 2021. Why? Because under the Trump Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might have used the information, tracked her down, arrested and deported her back to the Dominican Repub

Further down, the article tells us that Miss Herrera “followed her dream of a better life and joined a friend in Philadelphia” in 2000. the article does not tell us how she got to the United States from the Dominican Republic, an nation sharing the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

How did she enter? Did she overstay a legitimate visa, and simply not return home? Was she somehow smuggled into the United States via a private boat that landed at night on the Jersey shore or the Outer Banks of North Carolina? Either way, she broke the law!

The story tells us that Miss Herrera had two illegitimate children in the United States, which, sadly, makes them American citizens. The two daughters are now 17 and 15, and almost certainly have sucked up taxpayer dollars by attending Philadelphia’s public schools.

When the pandemic began, Herrera lost all five of her regular cleaning clients and pay of at least $650 a week. One employer said she had lost her job, and in a kind of trickle-down unemployment, could no longer pay Herrera.

Really? Five regular cleaning jobs? That means that either five separate clients were paying Miss Herrera cash ‘under the table,’ meaning that they were not withholding federal income taxes, state income taxes, the city wage tax, Social Security taxes and Medicare taxes, which is illegal, or Miss Herrera had presented falsified documents so that they could pay her legally, but also means she either forged documents herself, or paid someone else for forged documents.

Did Miss Herrera somehow pay her federal, state and local taxes? Did she pay her share of Social Security and Medicare taxes? Did she file her federal and state income tax forms? If she failed to do any of those things, she committed felonies!

The Inquirer article noted that Miss Herrera had an account with Wells Fargo bank. What documents did she present to open an account in her name. Was the account opened after the PATRIOT Act was passed, in which the documentation requirements became more stringent? Regardless, Miss Herrera must have presented some form of identification, and that means she presented forged documents to the bank. That is a felony.

So many people seem to think that crossing into the United States illegally is really no big deal. But living in the US illegally requires the commission of other crimes virtually every day. If someone is in the US, and has to work, he is doing so illegally. If he is working here illegally, and being paid in cash under the table, he is evading income taxes. If someone is paying him in cash that way, and fails to file a Form 1099 for the employed person — which would bring that person to the attention of the Infernal Revenue Service — the employer is committing a felony. There are so many things required to live and work in the United States which require the payment of taxes and having documentation that it really cannot be done legally if a person is an illegal immigrant.

And The Philadelphia Inquirer is covering that up!

“It has become increasingly clear that the restrictions placed on many resources prevent those who have greatest need from accessing them,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. The city is building another fund to lift 100,000 Philadelphians out of poverty over the next five years — and that fund will include undocumented immigrants, said Councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez.

So, the great Mayor of Philadelphia, who has presided over 109 murders so far this year, an increase of 29% over the same date last year, a year which fell just one killing short of the city’s all-time record, is going to give money, including taxpayers’ dollars, to non-citizens, to people in the city and country illegally. He can’t do his job in making the city safer, but he can enable more crime.

That’s just great, isn’t it?

In a wryly humorous link at the bottom of the Inquirer article was an OpEd about ‘vaccine envy.’

There is massive inequity in vaccine distribution. Black, Latinx, and low-income communities are being underserved while continuing to bear the brunt of the virus. For those fortunate enough and healthy enough to just be waiting your turn, it’s easy to get impatient.

According to the Inquirer, Miss Herrera, an illegal immigrant, not only got her first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine earlier this month, but got a new cleaning job as well. She stepped in front of an American citizen, one who hasn’t been able to get the vaccine yet, and she got another job it is illegal for her to have.[1]Despite being in Tier 1C, and just a month short of my 68th birthday, I have not been able to schedule my vaccine appointment yet with the Estill County Health Department, even though my 32 and 29 … Continue reading

This is what is wrong with liberalism, with the left and the #woke. This is why Donald Trump won in 2016, and may well contribute to another populist candidate winning in 2024. When we are allowing blatant violations of the law to not only go unpunished, but seeing our credentialed media publicizing them without any fear of law enforcement stepping in, things have gone very wrong in our country.[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading

References

References
↑1 Despite being in Tier 1C, and just a month short of my 68th birthday, I have not been able to schedule my vaccine appointment yet with the Estill County Health Department, even though my 32 and 29 year old daughters, both living in Lexington, have gotten their first doses. I cannot blame Philadelphia for that, but the vaccine rollout in Kentucky has been, despite Governor Andy Beshear’s high praises, pretty bad.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

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

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

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

The sad, sad decline of The Philadelphia Inquirer

I ran across a photo if the masthead of The Philadelphia Inquirer from February 25, 1953, and noticed the ‘taglines’ that it used: “Public Ledger” and “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”. By Public ledger, the Inquirer was setting itself up as Philadelphia’s newspaper of record, which Wikipedia defines as “a major newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative.” That Wikipedia article named four newspapers of record for the United States: The New York Times (Founded 1851), The Washington Post (1877), The Los Angeles Times (1881) and The Wall Street Journal (1889). First printed on Monday, Jun1 1, 1829, the then Pennsylvania Inquirer is older than any of them. “An editorial in the first issue of The Pennsylvania Inquirer promised that the paper would be devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion and ‘the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuses as the usurpation of power.’”

Boy has that changed! As has happened to other great newspapers, the newsroom of the Inquirer was captured by the young #woke, who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too.

“Devoted to the right of a minority to voice their opinion”? Yeah, that failed, too, as the Inquirer closed comments on the majority of its articles, stating that:

Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.

Really? How do they know? How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or was it just that the #woke didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions? “An Independent Newspaper for All the People”? No, the Inquirer has now become a non-profit newspaper for the left.

There’s a reason I’ve called it The Philadelphia Enquirer, mocking its name by using the same spelling as the National Enquirer.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Before I retired, I used to pick up a copy of the Inquirer at the Turkey Hill in downtown Jim Thorpe, on my way to the plant. I read it, as did my drivers, though they sometimes said I should have picked up the Allentown Morning Call instead, being somewhat closer to local news. I read a lot of stories in the Inquirer, about the killings of Philadelphia police officers, I noted how the newspaper didn’t really care much about the murders of young black men in the city, but has the killing of cute little white girl Rian Thal splashed through the paper for days.[2]That site search for Rian Thal returned 3,128 results! Think the Inquirer was obsessed much, or were they just printing what the editors thought their readers wanted to see?

So, I’m sad to see what the Inquirer has become. They write about “gun crime” as though an inanimate object somehow jumps up and shoot people all by itself, because it’s just too politically incorrect to note that that “gun violence” is disproportionately committed by black Philadelphians. The editors have dozens and dozens of articles claiming that #BlackLivesMatter, when it has become obvious, to anyone who reads the newspaper, that black lives don’t matter, unless they are taken by a white police officer.

Despite the fact that I said I wouldn’t, I finally subscribed to the digital edition of the Inquirer, after Mrs Pico kept telling me to do so rather than try to get copies of stories for free and then have to manually type them into my blog articles. But the paper has gone downhill, even from just ten years ago.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑2 That site search for Rian Thal returned 3,128 results! Think the Inquirer was obsessed much, or were they just printing what the editors thought their readers wanted to see?
Posted on by

Is there no actual journalism practiced at The Philadelphia Inquirer?

It’s a pretty sad thing that I have come to check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page every weekday morning.[1]The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only. Well, this is Monday morning, and the first of February, so we get the homicide statistics for the month of January. And an even fifty people didn’t experience much Brotherly Love in the City during what is normally the coldest month of the year.

In last year’s just-barely-missed-the-record, Philadelphia saw 38 homicides in January. Fifty is a 31.58% increase. Fifty in 31 days is a rate of 1.6129 per day, which, if maintained throughout 2021, would mean 589 people killed in the city’s mean streets.

Yet, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper of record for the city, the metropolitan area, and really the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, didn’t have the first hint of a story about this, at least not as of 11:38 AM EST, when last I opened the newspaper’s website.

Oh, there was plenty on the website’s main page. There was a big story about why the Inquirer was closing comments on its news stories, because “Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.”

How can they be sure that these views do not represent more than a “tiny fraction” of their audience? Have they really done the research, or is it because the #woke in the newsroom, who got Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski fired to resign because he wrote an attention grabbing headline, but one of which the left wholly disapproved, didn’t like the idea that the riff-raff could express their opinions?

The Inquirer could post an OpEd piece by Patrick J Egan strongly in opposition to capital punishment,[2]Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment … Continue reading but make no mention of the one crime, murder, that can result in capital punishment, even as it has surged to record levels?

How could fifty homicides, occurring at a higher rate than during the previous year be so blithely ignored, be not considered newsworthy?

Oh, wait, I know! You have to have actual journalists on the staff to practice journalism. No wonder I’ve seen it called The Philadelphia Enquirer!

References

References
↑1 The statistics are updated Monday through Friday only.
↑2 Yes, I, too, am opposed to capital punishment, though not for the same reasons. The author claims that executions could resume once Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) is out of office, and a capital punishment proponent is in office, while ignoring the fact that the previous Governor, Tom Corbett, a Republican, signed 47 separate death warrants during his four years in office, yet not one execution actually occurred.