Philadelphia Makes National News

I am sure you have seen the film clips shown recently on national television, often back to back , of some of the most outrageous criminal and ruthless behavior -  - reporting renegade citizenry activity in this city .  They mention Philadelphia over and over as the location.

First is the flash mobs running through center city and beating on pedestrians at random and dragging them from their cars with four or five pummeling them as a huge crowd runs through the streets and the stores destroying all they can.  We also have individual cases of gangs of youths attacking individual vulnerable citizens as was done by several students from Mastery School last week.

Second, and horrifying is the footage that must have just been released from the bus that was attacked by two teenage gunmen with automatic rifles in broad daylight a week or so ago. They whole thing is on video; from the woman striking her child; which prompted a bus patron to tell her he would report her to protective services, to her making a cell phone call.  Then at the next stop two guys with automatic rifles jamb open the back door as the patrons run for the back and front and pile themselves up at the front door preventing the doors from opening a la Coconut Grove.

As the passengers drop to the floor the gunmen back up and open fire on the sides of the bus. You can watch the bullets come through the metal and glass.  The driver then takes off and no one was killed, but the footage was so good they picked them up right away.

CLOCKWORK ORANGE MEETS BRAVE NEW WORLD.

We live in the most pervasively corrupt and dangerous city in this country. Not far from the conditions in Mexico. But crime pays so well for all those lawyers, prosecutors, ADAs, judges and court employees that who would want to change it?  Certainly not Arthur Makadon. Nutter the puppet will talk like a kindly grandfather about this and extend the curfew or whatever else David L.Cohen tells him to do.

Its only a matter of time.   We will be Detroit or Newark in a couple of years if nothing changes.   My guess is that these two events alone will drive 50,000 people from the city. The real estate tax increase another 150,000.  How about the day-to-day economics of who comes into the city from nearby suburbia, and then we have those who plan to visit this city for it history,architecture, museums and events.  Will we soon have to move then from location to location in special vehicles with police escorts?

The "take away the guns" cliché is not the remedy, and much of what happened involved no guns, just random violence for the thrill of doing it. Sure, part of the problem is economic, part of it cultural, but in my view all of it political.  The government of this one party town began in 1969 chasing business diversity and opportunity from this city and in 20 years one of the most diverse employment bases with opportunity at all levels drove all but education and health care from the area.  Those two enterprises consume tax revenue rather than generate it.

The argument that we have created new more technical professional jobs to replace the blue and while collar ones of the past only works if you have a population that can fill those jobs. Those that fit that criterion live mostly outside the city and commute.  The huge unemployed masses within the city have often been the victims of a failed educational system, no entry level opportunity and a permanent bi-generational welfare-based culture blended with a rationalized approach to values and family.

While what we have just seen here is not exclusive to this city, it is more rampant here now than elsewhere, as the film footage proves. It is time to stop lying to ourselves, the Emperor has no clothes, and no prospects of finding the money to buy them. The flash mobs and violence are symptom; not a cause.  Pension and budget defaults, phony accounting, further division between haves and have nots that no one wants to address, continue to allow the rationalization that you can subsidize poverty with someone else's money and have no real obligation to provide opportunity to face facts and work to end it.

Many of those enterprises in this city are doing more "poverty profiteering" than the claimed "social engineering".  Keep the blinders on when you vote and Philadelphia will soon lead the race to the bottom.

Jim Foster

Editor/Publisher