Not to be that guy or anything, but I pretty much called it: When the chips were down, TWU declined to go on strike and fuck up the city’s transportation system during its moment in the sun. According to the union, this happened because Gov. Rendell threatened to yank mass transit funding if either they or SEPTA officials left the negotiating table — an empty threat if ever I heard one. (Seriously, Fast Eddie’s gonna punish 1 million some-odd SEPTA commuters because authority and union leaders throw adolescent temper tantrums? Right.) But anyway. Using the gov’s alleged “threat” as cover, the union backed off its nihilistic promise to plunge this city into chaos over the weekend. Now, we’re told, a deal is imminent.

Good. Now, with the worst presumably behind us, let’s take a look at the bigger picture. First of all, I don’t really have a problem with SEPTA threatening to strike, in teh abstract anyway. I’ve spent most of my life in a largely non-union state, Florida, and seen what happens when there’s not a strong counterbalance to either governmental or business excess. My objection, rather, was to the nature of the TWU’s threat — i.e. give us our way or we’ll blow up the city. Sure. SEPTA shouldn’t be dragging out negotiations for six months after the last contract expired, but trying to negotiate by taking the city hostage isn’t my idea of maturity, or a way to engender my respect. The problem, in this particular instance, was one of tactics.

Does TWU have a case? Probably, at least in some respects. Yeah, rising healthcare costs suck, and no one wants to see their costs rise from 1 percent to 4 percent — when my insurance kicks in (please God, let me make it to Jan. 1) I’ll be paying somewhere around 7 percent of my paycheck for me and my fiancee — as SEPTA proposes for its workers. But everyone’s costs have gone up, everywhere. The cost of healthcare itself is increasingly astronomically (c’mon, public option), and without asking the union to pay up, those costs get passed along to riders and state taxpayers. But, OK, fine, whatever. Same with wages. Is SEPTA being a bit heavy-handed with a two-year wage freeze? I’ll admit to not knowing the severity of the authority’s budget woes, but I’d imagine they can bend a bit on that. I really haven’t found TWU’s argument for more pension money at all convincing.

The eventual agreement will probably fall somewhere in the middle. Seems there won’t be an increase in health costs, but I would imagine (or hope) that in return the union will give up its pension pipe dream, and then they’ll come to a middle ground on wages (maybe 1 percent a year instead of nothing; but really, the union’s demands for 4 percent per year are simply unrealistic, and I reckon they know that).

The bigger issue, for me — and this may make me a bit unpopular in these parts — is the union’s ability to muddy the authority’s ability to innovate. No layoffs, guaranteed? Great, until there’s a crisis that demands them. Guaranteed raises, no matter how well or poorly someone performs? I’m much more inclined to award merit over seniority.

See, to me, unions are supposed to be a counterbalance, not an anchor. SEPTA isn’t a multi-billion dollar corporation; it’s a state-funded authority, with a responsibility to provide transit at reasonable costs. The union would do well to keep in mind that that is its primary mission — it’s not merely a guaranteed jobs program. The union is and should be there to protect its workers from being exploited; I support that. But making unrealistic demands and then threatening to strike on the most important weekend of the year if you don’t get your way isn’t about protecting workers, it’s about manipulating SEPTA officials’ to produce maximum returns for its members, even if such returns are ultimately harmful to taxpayers and SEPTA users.

In that sense, I glad their bluff was called. Next time, negotiate like grown-ups.

In a picture.

Almost there:

That’s right, kids. Almost half of Americans now support your right to get high as a motherfuckin’ kite, down a bag of Doritos and watch Adult Swim. For comparison, more Americans now favor legalizing the devil’s weed than oppose healthcare reform. Just saying. The real story here is the generational divide. If you’re under 50, chances are you’re pro-pot. If you’re over 65, you’re not. (The olds also oppose healthcare reform, on account of wanting to keep the gubmint out of their Medicare or whatever, but that’s a discussion for another day.) In other words, stoners, be patient.

Hey so check this out: According to the Daily Beast, the dear ol’ City of Brotherly Love is the 11th smartest municipality in the country, and totally beats the shit out those morons in Austin, New York (!) and Fresno, which came in dead last. Yay us.

Nos. 1 and 2? Raleigh-Durham, which has lots of “researchers” and “smart people, and San Francisco, which has the braniacs who follow technology (and perpetually temperate weather). Here in Philly, TDB says: “From education to civic participation to reading habits, Philly, home to the University of Pennsylvania, scored well across the board.”

My biggest bitch? I’m new here and all, and don’t really know the city that well, but seriously — we lost to Baltimore? Baltimore? You people should be ashamed.

Incidentally, my former hometown of Orlando ranked pretty close to the bottom, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s ever lived there. In fact, the Daily Beast ranking dump on virtually every Florida burg, which gives me a lot of faith in their veracity even though I haven’t the time or inclination to do a look-see on their methodology.

Ballantine, Aug. 25

In today’s Shelf Life lit column, Justin Bauer compares four novelists who grapple with notions of identity — Boualem Sansal, Rawi Hage, Michelle Huneven and Dan Chaon — with varying success.

He particularly dug Chaon’s Await Your Reply:

Chaon’s characters — three sets of them, in three independent, loosely linked storylines — each willingly shuck off the lives they’ve been given. They get into their cars and set off to create entirely new selves, in the barrenness of the Michigan backwoods or an abandoned Great Plains motel or trekking through the Canadian tundra.

On one hand, Chaon’s bleak, thrilling high-wire stories celebrate the freedom of losing yourself, even as this lack of stability opens up his narrative to weirdness and terror. But in showing the ease with which his characters cast off one identity and assume another, Chaon questions the basic existence of a single identity.

Since today feels like the kind of day we’d like to trade our identity out for someone else’s (maybe someone who has Phils playoff tickets?), we’re giving away a copy to the first Clog reader who can answer the following trivia question:

At which Midwestern college does Chaon teach?

E-mail me at carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win. (Go Phils!)

CP contributor/friend of the Clog Jesse Delaney writes sharing these two T-shirt designs from excellent T-shirt site Philavania.com:

If I see someone wearing this shirt I might have to beat him down on sight.
Such is my disgust with SEPTA.

This one, too.

What say you? Do these threads make yr blood boil?

This week, CP got a call from a Northern Liberties resident with an unusual story. He, and about 50 other NoLibs residents, had attended a police town hall meeting on September 8. On his way out, he happened to pick up some literature that had been placed on a table by the door – in particular, three pamphlets entitled, “The Truth about Marijuana,” “The Truth About Pain Killers,” and “The Truth About Drugs.”

The pamphlets, he says, seemed ordinary enough at first. It wasn’t until he reached the end that he noticed the following tidbit:

“The first step is to understand why a person becomes trapped by drugs. In May 1969, when the international drug crisis was reaching its peak, author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard wrote: ‘When a person is depressed or in pain and where he finds no physical relief from treatment, he will eventually discover for himself that drugs remove his symptoms. . .”

And this:

And for the person with a drug problem, there are also real solutions to addiction. Narconon, a drug rehabilitation program that utilizes the methods of L. Ron Hubbard, has a sucess rate of more than 75% . . .

The pamphlet, produced by a group called the Foundation for  Drug-Free World (based in L.A.), it seems, was a piece of Scientologist literature.

Narconon, the group mentioned – and which has a name strikingly similar to Nar-anon, the mainstream Narcotics Anonymous organization – is, in fact, a Scientology-based drug rehab program that has caused plenty of controversey over the years.

So how did this pamphlet wind up at a police-sponsored meeting?

To find out, I called the 26th District Police headquarters and got Crime Prevention Officer Megan Fabrizio, who had attended the meeting and had herself helped arrange the materials on the table.

Officer Fabrizio said she didn’t know what I was talking about, but offered to dig up the box into which they had dumped everything on the table after the meeting.

To her surprise, she found the Scientology pamphlets buried in the pile.

“I don’t where they came from,” said Fabrizio. “They’re not mine. This is something I’ve never ever seen.”

Anybody, Officer Fabrizio pointed out, could have left them on that table.

And so the pamphlets’ origin remains a mystery.

 

 

 

Neighborhood Bike Works – a quirky and great little non-profit that keeps kids busy after school learning how to maintain and put together bicycles – is holding a fundraiser tonight at their seventh annual Bike Part Art Show.

It will feature art – made, as you might have guessed, out of bike parts.

There’s a suggested $5 donation at the door and there will be, I am told, beer.

7-10 P.M. tonight, Studio 34, 4522 Baltimore Ave, W. Phila.

Confused about the Doomsday budget, or “Plan C?” It’s simple: Nutter says he’ll close all the libraries, lay off 1,000 police officers, and shut own our courts if Harrisburg doesn’t pass the legislation necessary to tinker with our sales tax and pension payments.

But nobody believes he’s going to do it.

But he says he will: which lead the City Controller to take his plan seriously enough to say the city
can’t possibly implement it – which everyone already knows.

Everyone, that is, who’s following this stuff closely. All week, I’ve been getting emails from out-of-town friends asking, “Is your mayor really going to close all the libraries?”

“No,” I write back. “I don’t think so.”

So why, they ask, did they just read that he would?

Because local media – despite, I think, having a pretty good idea that the permanent implementation of Plan C is unlikely at best – has become part of the Big Bluff.

Maybe it’s not their fault – if Nutter says he’s going to close all the libraries and sack a thousand cops, it’s a reporter’s job to report that.

At the same time, it’s hard to read articles about the “Doomsday” budget every day and see so little critical questioning of whether the plan – which hasn’t been approved by anyone yet – is more than an elaborate game of chicken.

One notable exception is It’s Our Money’s Ben Waxman, who finally declared last week: “Plan C is a bluff. There, I said it.”

Could it be that part of the reason Nutter isn’t called out on his bluff is that we want it to work?

But surely, if we know it, and Nutter knows it, then Harrisburg knows it too. So are they in on it? After all, the more compelling Philadelphia’s case, the easier it is for legislators from elsewhere to justify to their own constituents a vote to help us out.

But there are two problems with the mass bluff – if, of course, that’s what it is.

For one thing, not everyone gets it. And the police officers and librarians and such watching this drama unfold probably aren’t making popcorn for the show: I imagine they’re scared.

For another, it paints the situation as a false either/or situation: either Harrisburg passes our plan or it’s fiscal doomsday.

Seems to me, though, that six months ago there were a lot of other ways to balance our budget. Nutter did it, at one point, with property taxes; others devised ways to balance it with hikes in wage and business taxes.

Yes, the idea of rehashing a new tax plan to cover the budget shortfall seems crazy – but so does everything else right now.

And I’m getting tired of telling everyone to disregard what they read in the news.

I mean, why not – they certainly seem to need the money.

The Daily News reports today that Sugarhouse is asking the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to help it get around having to pay taxes for transfering its gaming title to the corporation that own the waterfront land on which it intends to build.

And it’s not like the city needs any tax money right now, is it?

(Rep. Mike O’Brien disagrees, actually – he questions why Sugarhouse should get any special assistance. Imagine that.)

So I say, let’s start baking.

It wouldn’t be fair for Philadelphia not to pitch in now – we’ve already allowed them to scrap their plans for the attractive, multi-faceted casino that was promised originally for an “interim” facility – that will be surrounded by nothing but a vast parking lot (they were originally supposed to build a garage; Sugarhouse hasn’t offered a timetable for when that garage will be built).

You can’t help someone out like that and then abandon them in their moment of need (or at least, in their moment of having to pay taxes).

This thing is happening. And apparently it is rather naked. Go figure.

Follow BH’s naked ride on Twitter here.

footballsfuture.com

Johnson coaching his troops at Lehigh

Long time Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Johnson has passed away from cancer.

There will be a news conference tonight at 7 pm.

Philly.com has posted an obituary highlighting his accomplishments both here in Philadelphia, around the NFL and his football career in general.

A quick outtake shows how formidable Johnson was as a coach.

From 2000-08, Johnson’s units ranked 2nd in the NFL in sacks (390), 3rd down efficiency (34.0%) and red zone touchdown percentage (43.9%), and fourth in fewest points allowed (17.7 per game). During his 10-year tenure in Philadelphia, the Eagles earned seven playoff berths, five trips to the NFC Championship game and one Super Bowl appearance (following the 2004 season).

Photo | Tom Dreisbach

Sally Riley demonstrates in support of a public health care option.

Local supporters of a government-run health care plan met yesterday with members of Senator Arlen Specter’s staff. Prior to the meeting, a group of about 20, organized by MoveOn.org Political Action, demonstrated in front of the Senator’s office on Sixth and Arch streets.

The rally came on the tail of President Obama’s Wednesday press conference on health care, and a continued debate about reform in congress. The President supports a public health care plan, which the federal government would administer.

At Thursday’s rally, the demonstrators expressed support for the President’s position, and swapped personal stories regarding health care.

Bill Leatherbee, a 71-year-old self-employed architect, came out to the rally because of his stepdaughter. “She’s 28 years old,” he said, “but has the mental capacity of a four-year-old.” According to Leatherbee, her mental handicap necessitates constant professional supervision — a cost of about $50,000 a year. Neither his nor his wife’s health insurance plans cover his stepdaughter’s condition, he says. “We don’t know when we can retire, because we don’t know how we can pay for this.”

Eleanor Toub volunteers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She works with children in the outpatient day hospital at CHOP, which provides care to children with cancer. “I look at parents and it’s absolutely heartbreaking,” she says. “People who have all this horror in their lives have to decide how they can pay so that someone can live.”

Matt Stetson is 49 years old and recently became unemployed. Due to a pre-existing heart condition — Stetson has a bicuspid aorta — he hasn’t been able to find a new health insurance plan since he lost his COBRA coverage in March 2009. Stetson says his cardiologist sees no reason for the refusal of coverage, but his doctor has no say in the matter. “I could keep sending applications, but there’s a non-refundable fee,” he says. “I just gave up after a while.”

After sharing their stories, MoveOn field organizer Emily Southard picked four demonstrators to meet with members of Specter’s staff and urge the senator to support a public health care option. Demonstrators say they delivered a letter to Specter’s office (available after the jump) after discussing their own health care situations.

Specter’s office did not allow City Paper into the meeting. Over the weekend, Specter’s press secretary sent us the Senator’s latest statements regarding health care and the public option. In these statements, Specter calls a version of the public option, which Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has put forth, “a good idea.” Sen. Schumer’s more moderate proposed health care plan would create a public option comparable to existing private insurance plans. This plan would fund a public option without using tax revenue or government appropriations. Instead of paying health care providers at the typically lower Medicare rate, Sen. Schumer’s plan would provide compensation similar to that of private insurers. (This paragraph was added as an update).

On May 18, less than a month after joining the Democratic Party, Specter spoke to Congress about health care reform, though never made any statements explicitly supporting or opposing a public option. “I am open to discussing the best method in which to cover all Americans,” he stated, “including considering a public plan option and look forward to examining all of the options with my colleagues as the legislation progresses.”

Demonstrators left the meeting in good spirits, though unconvinced of the Senator’s support.

“They were pleasant,” demonstrator Sally Riley said of Specter’s staff. “They told us to get after the Republicans who were preventing reform.”

“They were very receptive,” said Bill Leatherbee following the meeting. “But they stopped short of supporting the public option.”

(more…)

In case you haven’t heard, the forum Domelights.com - mostly dedicated to the online conversations of Philadelphia policemen, firefighters, and wannabe policemen and firefighters – has become the subject of a lawsuit filed by black police officers against the Department for allowing on-duty officers to post racist material there.

If you never visited the site before - but find yourself irresistibly intrigued by the prospect of lots and lots of super racist cop talk – you may find yourself disappointed:  Domelights has shut down its site to new users.

But don’t worry – the media’s reprinting it for you!

Liz Spikol, in this week’s PW, devoted a nice chunk of the page to an homage to some of the site’s more-than-usually-super-racist quotes, in which police officers (or phoneys) refer to African-American residents as “animals,” and such.

She lists no less than fifteen quotes, each one indisputably cringe-worthy.

Then, in today’s Inquirer, columnist Monica Yant Kinney picked out this gem about Rochele Bilal, president of the Guardian Civic League, the officers’ group suing:

“Rochelle Bilal,” read one wildly celebrated post, “is a worthless piece of s- who deserves to be gang-raped outside an AIDS clinic.”

Wow – that’s a pretty horrible quote. Which makes me wonder: do we really need this stuff to be reprinted in the Inquirer, or the PW, or here?

Look, I’m glad to see racist comments by police officers – or imposters – being brought to light and condemned and all that.

But we’ve known this stuff was being posted for years; the only news is that folks are finally getting sued over it. Reporting the lawsuit is good — but doesn’t reprinting these comments ad nauseum seems a little gratuitous?