Tag Archives: #SocialJusticeWarriors

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Helen Gym Flaherty apparently thinks that money grows on trees And she wants to do everything she can to improve public safety except the most obvious: actually enforce the law!

As Robert Stacy McCain noted in “Chicago Votes for More Crime,” when the Windy City Democrats nominated police-hating Brandon Johnson to become their next Mayor, the bad things that happened under Mayor Lori Lightfoot would just get worse.

When Jazz Shaw refers to the city’s “carjacking epidemic,” it’s no exaggeration. As recently as 2014, Chicago had barely 300 carjackings a year. Last year, there were more than 1,600 carjackings in Chicago, to go along with 737 murders and 2,937 people wounded from gunfire.

In crime-ridden Philadelphia, you’d think that people would take notice of that, and some did. Philadelphia’s Working Families Party tweeted how happy they were that Mr Johnson won in Chicago, and wanted Philly to be next by voting for Helen Gym Flaherty.

Who are the Working Families Party? On their About page, they pretty much tell us that they are full socialist without saying that they are full socialist, but I will admit to being amused that the photo they used[1]Also here, in case they delete it. as an illustration of who they are was of almost entirely young people, mostly Asian, in front of a Chinese restaurant in New York City, in the summer[2]Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops., all wearing silly face masks.

And so we come to Mrs Flaherty. The Philadelphia Inquirer, which, to their (slight) credit, endorsed Rebecca Rhynhart rather than the far-left Mrs Flaherty, had this on the Working Families’ favorite:

Philly mayoral candidate Helen Gym’s education plan includes a $10B ‘Green New Deal’ for schools

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District.

by Anna Orso | Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 7;40 PM EDT

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Helen Gym on Thursday unveiled an education proposal that includes guaranteed jobs for teenagers, free SEPTA passes for all city students, and a $10 billion plan to modernize school buildings.

Gym, who stood with supporters outside Edward T. Steel Elementary School in Nicetown to make the announcement, called her public-education focused capital plan a “Green New Deal for Schools” and vowed to implement a 10-year facilities improvement plan. She also said she would add more librarians and counselors to schools, overhaul the high school selection process, and base school budgets on need, not enrollment levels.

Ahhh, yes, the Edward T Steel Elementary School. City Councilwoman Kendra Brooks, a Working Families Party member, tweeted:

I met @HelenGymPHL over a decade ago when my daughter’s school was going to be privatized. We were a few moms saying we want something greater. We DESERVE something better.

That’s what her education plan is about. That’s why I’m standing here today because since day one, she’s been fighting for communities like mine. And winning.

To this day, Edward T. Steel Elementary is a public school.

Why yes, it is. In the still public Steel Elementary, which is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 8% scored at or above that level for reading. Maybe keeping it public didn’t work all that well?

Another respondent had the charts. But perhaps having a campaign rally touting public education in front of a clearly failing public school wasn’t the brightest idea, unless Mrs Flaherty was assuming that the people who would be most likely to vote for her aren’t particularly bright themselves.

Her announcement was another sign that the former City Council member and longtime public-schools activist is running in part on her education background by proposing a laundry list of schools improvements that teachers and advocates have been urging for years. . . . .

The proposal didn’t include an overall price tag, but $10 billion in capital costs alone would represent an enormous expense. Under the current administration, the proposed capital investment for the entire city for the next six years is $13.2 billion.

My compliments to reporter Anna Orso for researching that and pointing it out. Where would the city get the money?

Gym said Thursday the city could borrow money to finance some capital costs and that she favors directing a higher share of property taxes to the School District, which currently receives 55% of local property tax revenue. Doing so would, in turn, decrease cash flow to the city’s coffers.

“The point is that we’re not going to get there if all we say is what we don’t have,” she said. “I know the city has to get down to business to do it, but it needs a plan, it needs a vision, and we need somebody who’s been relentless about fighting for this from day one.”

As we have previously noted, Philadelphia’s population has dropped by 2.28% between the April 2020 Census and the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 population guesstimate. More, 3.34% of the 36,539 souls lost during that time period, 1,222 people, were lost to murder! If Mrs Flaherty’s proposals were put into effect, the obvious result is that more better-off people would move out of the city due to the higher taxes which would necessarily be imposed to pay for all of her ideas, whether paid for by direct taxation or in the debt service she would impose. Philly’s poverty rate, 23.1%, is double the U.S average, while the city’s median income, $49,127, is just three-quarters of the national average. Mrs Flaherty’s plans, if they push out more of the higher earners, can only exacerbate that problem, and make paying for her plans even harder.

But her plans, along with those of the Working Families Party are pretty much in line with their complete lack of understanding of economics. Perhaps they believe that money can be created out of thin air, since that’s what our federal government seems to be doing, but Philly isn’t the federal government.

The city’s teachers union, one of Gym’s biggest backers, quickly endorsed the plan Thursday, with Philadelphia Federation of Teachers President Jerry Jordan saying in a statement that Gym’s plan also prioritizes safety — including through guaranteed after-school programs — and has “thoughtful and proactive measures to address a real crisis in our city.”

Well, of course the teachers’ union endorsed Mrs Flaherty! Government employees all, they, too, have no concept of economics, and they, too, seem to think that the public trough is ever-full and never-ending. It was the teachers in Kentucky which caused former Governor Matt Bevin to lose his re-election bid, because he tried to do something really radical like reform their pension system before it went broke.

But in reading Mrs Flaherty’s website Issues page, clicking on her “Safety in every neighborhood” section, I read that she would “Declare a State of Emergency on Gun Violence,” “Protect, Uplift, and Empower Philadelphia’s Young People,” have “Community-Driven Interventions and Effective Policing,” “Reduce Violence with Clean and Green Neighborhoods”, and “Provide Real Support for Victims of Violent Crime and their Families,” spending gobs of money in these things, but never once said anything about reducing the number of vacancies in the Philadelphia Police Department, the people who actually enforce the law, the people who do their best to get criminals off the streets. Mrs Flaherty strongly endorsed and campaigned with, George Soros-sponsored “restorative justice” District Attorney Larry Krasner, later saying, “I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels. We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.” She wants to do everything ti increase public safety other than getting criminals off the streets! The Philadelphia Tribune reported:

She also vowed to overhaul the Philadelphia Police Department, “so that they are more responsive and interactive with neighbors, so that we are dealing with young people, and helping and support young people, who are currently in the path of violence right now.”

So, nothing about more police officers, just ‘progressive’ reform. Yeah, that has worked so well other places.

In addition to reverse the slashing of hours at recreation centers and public libraries, she said she wants public schools to be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., referencing the high amount of gun violence involving students that happens before 6 p.m. Gym also pledged to remove 10,000 abandoned cars from city streets and sealing 50% of the city’s vacant lots.

So, spending more money, money that the Jim Kenney Administration couldn’t find. It’s not like Mayor Kenney wanted to close libraries and recreation centers; he just didn’t have the money to do otherwise. Of course, having the recreation centers open didn’t decrease violence, and the city could open only 50 of its 65 pools because they couldn’t find enough lifeguards.

Let’s face it: there are no good candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, but there are some who are worse than others, and Helen Gym Flaherty is the worst of the worst.

References

References
↑1 Also here, in case they delete it.
↑2 Or so I judge by their shorts, sandals, and crop tops.
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The Social Justice Warriors do not believe in people’s property rights

As we noted on Thursday, Philadelphia uses an unusual system for evictions, not relying on the Sheriff’s office, but a private firm:

Unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia courts rely on a private attorney, appointed by Municipal Court’s president judge and known as a landlord-tenant officer, to execute evictions. This attorney deputizes private security contractors to perform on-site lockouts in exchange for the right to collect millions in related eviction fees.

With a woman resisting a lawful eviction getting shot in the head by a deputy landlord-tenant officer on Wednesday morning, there were obvious outcries from the usual suspects:

Pa. lawmakers want to ban hired security from doing evictions after shooting of Philly tenant

A deputy landlord-tenant officer shot a woman while enforcing a court-ordered eviction. Lawmakers are proposing to change how the system operates.

by Ryan W. Briggs , Max Marin, and Jesse Bunch | Thursday, March 30, 2023

State lawmakers from Philadelphia are proposing to ban private firms from enforcing evictions after a security contractor shot a 35-year-old woman during an attempted lockout Wednesday.

The move comes after a shooting that has brought Philadelphia’s unusual eviction system into the spotlight.

While most jurisdictions deploy sworn law enforcement personnel, such as sheriff deputies, to enforce evictions, Philadelphia outsources much of that work to a private, for-profit law firm, known as a Landlord-Tenant Officer. This firm in turn contracts out the work of serving court notices and performing tenant lockouts to armed security guards, known as deputy landlord-tenant officers.

That unique arrangement would be banned under legislation State Sens. Nikil Saval and Sharif Street plan to introduce. A bill the Philadelphia Democrats plan to introduce next month would amend state codes to clarify that courts across Pennsylvania “cannot empower private companies or individuals to perform evictions,” according to a statement.

With “progressive” Helen Gym Flaherty running for Mayor of Philadelphia and letting us know how she feels about the eviction system, I can easily see how the rights of property owners can be abridged by the city government. If evictions are returned to the Sheriff’s office for enforcement, then the problems that the Sheriff’s office already have would hit eviction services. In the past, confiscated weapons have gone unaccounted or missing, and even though the then-new Sheriff, Rochelle Bilal, said that she had instituted a new, reformed system and was cleaning up the mess in November of 2020, we previously noted that Sheriff’s Deputy Samir Ahmad was arrested in October of 2022 for trafficking firearms.

The Sheriff is an independently-elected official in Philadelphia, and even the left-wing Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer has complained that Sheriff Bilal has failed in her attempts to reform the Department and that the whole office should be abolished. What if the next Sheriff campaigns on a pledge to not enforce eviction orders?

The original Fourteenth Amendment, via the National Archives.

The Fourteenth Amendment says, in part:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Our rights to property are confirmed in the Constitution of the United States, but we have a situation in which a lot of Philadelphians think that evictions for not paying your rent are somehow wrong. Philly’s leftist politicians — and Democrats outnumber Republicans about seven-to-one in registrations in the city — are very well able to see that landlords are not exactly the most popular people there.

Even if the Sheriff’s office completely supports court-ordered evictions, the city has had staffing shortages in virtually every department; giving eviction duty to the sheriff’s office means that more deputies would be needed, at a time when they are difficult to hire.

The eviction case was one of dozens at Girard Court Apartments in recent years.

The complex is owned by Odin Properties, which is among Philadelphia’s largest landlords. Owned by developer Philip Balderston and based in Philadelphia, its website advertises a full portfolio that encompasses some “10,000 apartments and 200,000 square feet of commercial space in 14 U.S. States.”

But a 2020 report from progressive advocacy group One PA also identified Odin as among “the highest evictors in Philadelphia,” having brought 470 eviction cases to Municipal Court in 2019.

One would expect that one of Philly’s “largest landlords” would also be among “the highest evictors” in the city; the more units one leases, the more non-paying renters he will have.

Who are “One PA,” which even the Inky called a “progressive advocacy group”? They are perfectly willing to tell you exactly who they are!

Housing is a fundamental human right and must be prioritized over the profits of landlords and developers. City Council must act now to protect Philadelphians and support low-income Black and brown residents to stay in their homes and continue to build thriving communities. They must pass rent control and “pay as you stay” property tax relief to create thriving communities in which their constituents can stay in their homes. Our communities need the Freedom to STAY.

Predatory landlords and developers are hiking rents, evicting tenants, operating unsafe housing, and displacing Black and brown Philadelphians, who often have the fewest resources to fight back due to a history of housing discrimination, racial and economic segregation, and depressed wages. These same communities face dramatic increases in property taxes, jeopardizing what wealth they have managed to build. Many low-income tenants find themselves moving every few years because of unsafe and unhealthy homes, hiked rents, and landlords selling their homes. At the rate of current rent increases, many families are not able to relocate to healthier, more stable conditions. They find themselves evicted, disrespected, and dismissed, time after time, causing homelessness and/or mental or physical illness for many. The system is stacked against low-income renters and homeowners and in favor of wealthy landlords and developers.

Translation: they believe that people have a right to the homes and apartments they rented, even if they don’t pay their rent. That landlords and developers invested their own money into building and buying housing units, that they have their property rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, apparently means nothing to them.

Since the start of 2022, office addresses associated with Odin have appeared in at least another 727 different landlord tenant filings in Municipal Court. A typical month in Philadelphia sees between 1,500 and 2,000 eviction filings, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, a figure that does not include illegal evictions.

A spokesperson from the Department of Licenses and Inspections said building inspectors issued several violations to the Girard Court complex during a January inspection that stemmed from complaints about nonfunctional fire alarms. That case is still listed as unresolved.

People seem to have a picture of landlords, or property owners, as Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks. But property owners have a right to their property, regardless of how wealthy or otherwise they are. The majority of rental property owners are actually small entrepreneurs who own five or fewer units. This statistic equates to 10.8 million investors representing 98% of all rental property owners or 80% of all rental properties.

As I mentioned previously, we own one rental unit, though it’s a not-for-profit, rented within the family property. The intention is that, once we go to our eternal rewards, our daughters and my sister-in-law’s son, will inherit the house, and, we hope, a significant appreciation in investment. We aren’t tying anyone to the railroad tracks!

Our Constitution is supposed to protect our rights, including protecting our rights from the tyranny of the majority. But I can see the “progressives” of Philadelphia trying to end the property rights of landlords and property owners in the City of Brotherly Love.

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Socialism in education

Despite Thomas Jefferson’s soaring words in the Declaration of Independence, all men are not created equal. Some are taller than others, and greater height confers many advantages in life. Some are better-looking than others; we all know that better-looking people have advantages in life. Some are physically stronger, some are faster or quicker, some more athletic, and some more intelligent.

These things matter, and they most certainly matter in school.

If you happen to be one of the smarter ones, you will remember those times in school where your teacher had taught something, you got it, and then he taught the same thing again, because not everyone learned it the first time through. Since we want to believe that almost anyone can earn his high school diploma, teachers are expected to keep teaching the points necessary until everyone gets it. This, to put it bluntly, sets the education pace at the rate at which the dumber students learn.

Of course, educators know this, and have been addressing it for many years; these days they are called ‘honors programs,’ in which the smarter students have the opportunity to take classes in which the ‘slower learners’ are left out.

Vancouver School Board cuts honours programs

School board says honours programs create inequities between students

CBC News · Posted: June 16, 2021 6:07 PM PT

The Vancouver School Board is cutting honours programs for secondary school students effective this fall.

Honours math and science will be cut, and honours English has already been discontinued.

Eric Hamber secondary and Magee secondary are the last two schools to offer honours math and science, as conversations about cancelling honours programs began more than five years ago.

In an emailed statement to CBC News, a school board spokesperson said honours courses create inequities for students.

“By phasing out these courses, all students will have access to an inclusive model of education, and all students will be able to participate in the curriculum fulsomely,” the statement reads.

Fulsomely, huh? The Cambridge Dictionary defines fulsomely as “in a way that expresses a lot of admiration or praise for someone, often too much, in a way that does not sound sincere.” The Merriam-Webster gives a definition which allows, in some cases, it not to have a snarky intent, and, given the nature of the author, perhaps it wasn’t meant to be insincere, but I can see, in the evil corner of my mind, the school board not meaning it that way, but which ever individual who wrote it did.

When I read this, my mind went immediately to the notion of the ‘progressives’ when it comes to socialism. To the left, socialism means that everyone will be treated, and rewarded, equally, and that we will all have a sort of upper-middle class lifestyle. There will be no billionaires, but there will also be no poor.

Except, of course, several countries have already tried some forms of socialism: Venezuela, North Korea, the old Soviet Union, the eastern European nations under Soviet sway, and China.

What actually happened was that there were a few wealthy and powerful people, but the great mass of the population suffered through poverty and scarcity. The population were, generally speaking, more economically equal, but what they were was equally poor.

This is what the Vancouver School Board is doing. They can’t make the slower learners catch up to the smarter students, but they can hold back the smarter students to the pace of the slower ones. That, I guess, is real ‘social justice.’

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Elect #SocialJustice public officials, and watch crime soar

StJohnTheDivineWilliamPortoIt was the summer of 2007, when my younger daughter, then a rising sophomore in high school, was considering architecture as a potential collegiate major, and she and I went to New York City on an architecture tour. One of the places that she wanted to see was the Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine, which is located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112th Street.

Well, we missed our subway stop, and instead of getting off at 110th or 116th streets, we wound up getting off at 125th Street. That’s Harlem!

So, my daughter, who was the whitest white girl in town, and I walked back down to our destination. The streets were clean, the people were pleasant, and we didn’t have the first moment’s trouble.

Rudolph Giuliani had succeeded the abysmal David Dinkins as Mayor of New York City on January 1, 1994, and served through December 31, 2001. From Wikipedia:

Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.[3][4] After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, holding a platform of toughness on crime.[1][5] He led New York’s controversial “civic cleanup” as its mayor from 1994 to 2001.[1][6] Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City’s new police commissioner.[5] Reforming the police department’s administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory,[5] which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals.[7] In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a “family values” vibe and a return to the area’s earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts.[8] As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, yet later critics cite other contributing factors.[1] In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer.[9][10] For his mayoral leadership after the September 11 attacks in 2001, he was called “America’s mayor”.[5][11] He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001,[12][13] and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

By the time my daughter and I made that trip, Mayor Giuliani had been succeeded by another Republican — who later became an independent, and later still, a Democrat — in Michael Bloomberg, and as mayor, he kept the strict policing policies of Mr Giuliani.

But, after three terms, Mayor Bloomberg was succeeded by far left social justice warrior Bill de Blasio. From the New York Post:

NYPD union slams Big Apple as ‘city of violence’ amid surge in shootings

By Amanda Woods | April 27, 2021 | 1:09pm | Updated

The NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association slammed the Big Apple as “the city of violence” amid a 250 percent surge in shootings last week, and a slew of other disturbing crimes citywide.

“Mayor de Blasio has allocated 30 million dollars to bring tourism to NYC,” the union tweeted Monday morning. “Welcome to the city of violence.”

The SBA included a screengrab showing nearly two dozen shootings across the five boroughs between Friday and Sunday.

“Shootings and Homicides plaque [sic] NYC and the numbers aren’t final,” the union tweeted.

NYPD data indicates that 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over a seven-day period ending Sunday evening.

The department said it logged 12 shootings with 14 victims during the same time last year — more than a month into the city’s COVID-19 lockdown, according to the weekly Compstat data.

Chicago and Philadelphia laugh! The latest weekly NYPD CompStat Report, for the week of April 12th through 18th, indicates that there had been 106 murders in New York City through the th, up from 100 at the same time last year.

As of the 18th, Chicago had seen 177 homicides, up to 185 as of the 25th, while Philly had piled up 159 dead bodies by the end of the 25th. With New York’s much larger population, their effective homicide rate is significantly lower, but it’s climbing, and getting away from the stricter policing under “Broken Windows” has proven to be ineffective.

The left have, for years, decried “mass incarceration,” but lenient law enforcement has proven to be a bad idea even for the criminals. We have previously noted how John Lewis, AKA Lewis Jordan, who slew Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, and Nikolas Cruz, accused of the mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were given every possible break. Had they been in jail at the time they committed their murders, yeah, they might have served a year or three, but Mr Jordan wouldn’t be on death row today, looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, and Mr Cruz wouldn’t have the same kind of sentence looking him dead in the eye.

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family.

Are Messrs Jordan and Cruz somehow better off today because lenient law enforcement kept them out of jail? Is Andrew Brown, with his 180-page-long rap sheet, better off today because, despite many criminal convictions, he was out of jail the day he decided to start a gunfight with several Pasquotank County, North Carolina, deputies trying to serve a couple of warrants? Was 21-year-old Hasan Elliot better off on that Friday the 13th when he should have been in jail, and would have been in jail had not Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office declined to have him locked up on a serious parole violation, and he had a shootout with police?

Treating the petty criminals seriously is better for everyone in the long run. It’s better for society, as it gets the bad guys off the street, and lowers the overall crime rate, and it’s better for the criminals themselves, because when they are locked up for crimes that leave them with hope of eventually getting out of prison, they don’t have as much time on the streets, usually in their prime crime committing ages, they are likely to commit the big crimes which will have them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.

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Mayor Jim Kenney wanted to not increase police funding, to appease the left, and tried to sneak it through in other departments

We have not been particularly charitable toward Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), nor any of the rest of the political leadership of the City of Brotherly Love, but this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer just thoroughly amused me:

Mayor Kenney said his budget wouldn’t increase police spending. It’s not that simple.

His proposal does include new investments for police. They’re just included in the budgets for other departments.

by Anna Orso and Laura McCrystal | April 15, 2021 | Updated: 6:25 PM EDT

Mayor Jim Kenney avoided taking a side in the political battle over law enforcement funding on Thursday when he said he’s proposing flat funding for the Philadelphia Police Department in the coming year.

But his proposal does include new investments for police. Some fund reforms. Others are tucked into budgets for different departments.

In addition to the $727 million police allocation that’s roughly equivalent to last year’s, the administration proposed funneling additional money for police-related reforms and programs through the Managing Director’s Office. And it set aside funding for expected raises as a result of upcoming contract negotiations with municipal unions, including the police.

Of the cash that would run through the Managing Director’s Office, about $6 million would fund a citywide program that pairs behavioral health specialists with officers responding to mental health-related 911 calls. Another $750,000 in spending for that office would expand training for police “to make positive decisions when put in difficult situations.”

There’s more at the original.

So, the Mayor is yielding to the leftist mobs, and not increasing funding for the Philadelphia Police Department, despite 145 homicides in the city, 35 more than the same date last year, a 31.8% increase, and last year saw a near-record 499 people bleed out their life’s blood in Philly’s mean streets.[1]The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.

But he also knows that more funding is needed, so he’s hiding it in other areas of the city budget. There are more details in the Inquirer story.

But proponents of defunding the police criticized the proposal, saying tax dollars going toward reforms still prop up a system they see as harmful.

“Mayor Jim Kenney is trying to pull the wool over our eyes,” said Kris Henderson, executive director of Amistad Law Project, a West Philadelphia public-interest law center that advocates ending mass incarceration. “Resources that end up in the hands of police are police funding.”

So, what is the Amistad Law Project? They say they are “a public interest law firm and organizing project working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania and fighting to get our communities the resources they need to thrive,” without realizing that the problem isn’t ‘mass incarceration,’ but that too few people are locked up!

At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

Do the good people at Amistad think that, somehow, the 145 people who are now stone-cold graveyard dead, or the 499 who were murdered last year, got that way by the honest mistakes of nice guys? They are “attorneys and organizers,” and one has to assume that anyone who got into law school in the first place isn’t a complete idiot; they have to know that the people who are committing these homicides have mostly had previous brushes with the law, sometimes many brushes with the law. These are the people that the noble #SocialJusticeWarriors want to keep out of jail, but when they have been left out of jail for lesser offenses, some of them wind up going on to bigger and badder things.

When a 6-year-old boy was wounded, and a man killed when someone fired “at least” twelve shots at them as they were sitting in a parked car in the 800 block of South 53rd Street Wednesday evening, do the very concerned “attorneys and organizers” of Amistad think it was really nothing? Are they saying to themselves, “Well, at least the shooter, or shooters — the story said that there was “at least” one shooter but there could have been more — wasn’t incarcerated”?

It seems that almost every time we read about a suspect in a Philadelphia murder — in the too few times the police actually identify and catch him, anyway — we read that he already had a criminal record, that he couldn’t legally own the gun he used, and that he was already wanted on a parole violation. Such suspects usually could still be in jail, were they given the maximum sentence for their previous crimes.

Nikolas Cruz was not a victim of ‘mass incarceration,’ because the Broward County Sheriff’s Department let him go without charges on several occasions. Young Mr Cruz could have been in jail on an in-school assault charge, but the school board did not want to contribute to the “school to prison” pipeline, so he had no criminal record, was able to purchase his weapon legally, and now seventeen people are pushing up daisies, because oh-so-well-meaning people like the Amistad “attorneys and organizers” didn’t want to take his earlier crimes seriously.

In Philadelphia itself, Lewis Jordan, a.k.a. John Lewis, had been treated leniently by the office of then-District Attorney Lynne Abraham, and was out on the street when he could, and should, have been in jail. On October 31, 2007, Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy walked into a Dunkin’ Donuts, the scene of a previous robbery, to check on it, just as Mr Jordan was attempting to rob the place; Mr Jorden shot Officer Cassidy in the head, killing him. Had law enforcement treated Mr Jordan seriously, rather than dropping the charges if he’d attend drug counseling courses, he would have been in jail, and Officer Cassidy would have gone home to his wife that Hallowe’en.

More, Mr Jordan might have spent what, a year in the clink. No one can say whether he would have learned his lesson in prison, but if he had been locked up that day, as he could have been, he (probably) wouldn’t be on death row now.

Amistad opposes “mass incarceration,” but had criminals been treated more seriously for their lesser offenses, people like Mr Cruz and Mr Jordan would have a reasonable chance of walking free at sometime in the future. As it is, they will both die in prison.

This is what those who are soft on crime have wrought. Petty criminals who aren’t slapped down hard become bigger criminals, and worse things happen. At some point, the soft-heartedness of the left has to be recognized for what it really is, soft-headedness.

References

References
↑1 The record was 500, set during the crack cocaine wars in 1990.
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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.

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↑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.