The Wronged Man

In many parts of the world, it is the season of joy, peace, and goodwill towards men.

Not in Philadelphia. Here, it is the season of fear, loathing, and deep-seated mistrust.

We have a serial killer on our hands.

What we also have is the mob frenzy, widespread panic, and media circus that follow along with big murder cases. And the victims of that frenzy include more than the poor women choked to death by a homicidal maniac.

Police have dubbed the killer the “Kensington Strangler”, and have positively linked the murders of Elaine Goldberg, Nicole Piacentini, and Casey Mahoney to one perpetrator through DNA evidence. All three bodies were found partially clothed and sexually assaulted in abandoned Kensington lots.

All three victims had histories of drug addiction and prostitution, which authorities say fit the serial killer profile.

These are women who exist in the dark, shadowy fringes of society; often having had no contact with loved ones for months, even years. They have been written off by their families and even police departments, where their missing person files collect dust in old file cabinets. We see them every day, but pay them little attention – that is, until their broken and lifeless bodies are found in trash-filled alleys and weed-choked empty lots.

Neighborhood residents are near panic, and probably should be. A cold-blooded, remorseless killer walks among them, and no one knows when or where he’ll strike next.

Police have blanketed the area, and have arrested more than 120 men and women in the neighborhood in recent weeks on prostitution-related charges. DNA swabs were taken from more than 150 men in an attempt to find the strangler. The Guardian Angels have swooped in from New York to join the search effort. Reward money for information leading to the arrest of the killer now stands at $37,000, and residents have started websites and pages on social networking sites to share information and tips.

And that is where it gets a little dicey. Just ask 24-year old Kensington resident Triz Jefferies.

Someone spread hundreds of fliers throughout the neighborhood with Jefferies' name, photo and address, naming him as a prime suspect. That same flier showed up on Kensington Strangler Facebook pages and was distributed via text message.

Suddenly, Jefferies found himself a prisoner in his own home. A crowd had gathered outside his door, out for bloody vengeance.

Jefferies had good reason to fear. This is the same neighborhood, remember, where just last year child rapist Jose Carrasquillo was captured by locals and beaten to a pulp. When police arrived, they had to save Carrasquillo from being torn limb from limb before arresting him.

The difference? Carrasquillo was stone guilty, and quickly admitted his crimes. Jefferies, on the other hand, is an innocent man caught in the whirlwind of vigilante justice.

To his credit, a panicked Jefferies called the police himself, and was escorted through the angry mob by officers who took him to the Special Victims Unit. There, he was interviewed, swabbed for DNA, and subsequently cleared as a suspect.

That exoneration doesn’t change the fact that someone - perhaps someone with an unrelated grudge against Jefferies - not only deliberately and maliciously put his life in danger, but momentarily threw both authorities and neighbors off the track of the real killer.

Police say whoever tried to frame Jefferies could face charges if caught, but don’t hold your breath waiting for someone to admit to setting him up. More likely, the episode will soon be forgotten; a tangential footnote to a much larger narrative.
That, to me, is an additional crime. Jefferies’ frightening chapter to this story should be repeated and remembered.

If you, or someone you know and love, just happen to be a young black man who vaguely resembles the widely-distributed description of the Kensington Strangler, Jefferies’ story could easily be your story.

What if Jefferies hadn’t had the presence of mind to call police? What if the mob had gotten to him before police arrived?

No two ways about it. Whoever distributed that flier put out a contract on Jefferies’ life, no different than a mob boss ordering a hit on a business rival. Anonymously, and without much fear of retribution, someone tried to have Jefferies lynched.

The mayor, district attorney, police commissioner and concerned neighbors are right – the Kensington Strangler must be brought to justice soon, and people should keep an eye out for suspicious activity. But mob rule and vigilante justice are not a substitute for cooperative investigation.

Just ask Triz Jefferies.

A Better Than Average Week

Even a dedicated curmudgeon like me has to admit things are looking up this week in the ol’ City of Brotherly Love.

We’re all giddy with excitement at the impending return of pitching ace Cliff Lee, whose addition to the Phillies’ staff is nothing short of monumental. The expected starting rotation of Lee, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels constitutes the most feared and dangerous lineup of hurlers since the Atlanta Braves of the 1990’s, when they featured Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine, and Millwood.

Some local sports outlets have already dubbed the Phillies’ lineup with the Star Wars-inspired moniker R2C2 – which, knowing this town, is just lame and corny enough to stick. I suddenly long for the good old days of the 1970’s Oakland A’s, whose pitchers – Blue Moon Odom, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, and Rollie Fingers - came with their own built-in nicknames.

But baseball season is still months away, and I suspect some of the giddiness will fade when we get a good look at the Phillies’ 2011 merchandise and ticket prices. Somebody’s got to pay for all that talent, folks.

As I’m writing this column, they’re cutting the grand opening ceremonial ribbon over at the President’s House exhibit on Independence Mall. As you well know by now, it’s been a long and arduous process, with heated passion on both sides of the debate of the historical significance of George Washington’s slaves.

Thanks to local attorney Michael Coard and the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, former mayor John Street, and a host of concerned citizens, historians, and archeologists; the fascinating stories of these early slaves is finally being told in full context.

But what really grabbed my attention this week was City Council’s all day hearing on police misconduct. Fifteen Philadelphia police officers have been arrested – not just fired, but arrested - in the past two years, and the number of civilian complaints is at an all-time high.

Unlike the endlessly painful tedium that hallmarks most council hearings, this one provided an opportunity for both catharsis and education.

It was cathartic for the victims of police violence and abuse, who courageously came out to testify about their own cases, and on behalf of their loved ones. After months, sometimes years, of isolation and official silence while their cases grind slowly through the justice system, they finally had the opportunity to have their voices heard.

Even better was that they got to do it in front of Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and his top brass as well as city council. And it was Ramsey, in his testimony, who provided the education.

Ramsey testified he would begin to implement thorough background checks on recruits, including polygraph tests, and interviews with family members, friends and neighbors. He said he also asked the Civil Service Commission to raise the recruitment age from 19 to 21 and to require that recruits have at least three years of driving experience and an associate degree or 60 college credits, with a minimum C average.

I had no idea they weren’t doing this already – at least the background check and polygraph part. So I took a look at the police department’s website, www.phillypolice.com, and sure enough, they detail the entire scope of the Recruit Background Investigations Unit.

They talk to a lot of people about your past history alright – but apparently not the people who would allow them to effectively sift out the assorted thieves, bullies, cutthroats and sociopaths giving the department a bad name lately. Any effort by top brass to raise the bar for incoming recruits to the exclusion of these goons is welcome, and long overdue.

Also found on the department’s website, and mentioned by Ramsey at the hearing, are the improved methods of filing a complaint against officers suspected of misconduct. Anonymous complaint forms will be available at city agencies like public libraries and recreation centers. There are actually two online forms on the website, one for citizen’s complaints, and one for officers’ complaints against colleagues. (I was about to make a snarky comment about which one gets the most mouse clicks, but that one is just too easy, and even I have standards.)

I admit, though, to being encouraged by the message above the police officers’ complaint form titled: “Integrity Starts With You”. It says, in part, “The first step is simple, but the hardest. Stop protecting and tolerating other members’ inappropriate behavior. There is no justification for their wrongful actions. It’s up to all of us to bring back a sense of professionalism and pride to the Philadelphia Police Department.”

At least they finally figured that out, which is the first step in the right direction.

Truth and Consequences

More than 70 percent of eligible voters don’t bother to cast their ballots on Election Day.

Ask one of them about this curious decision to become proactively inactive, and more likely than not you’ll get a speech about how it doesn’t matter if you vote because all politicians are corrupt anyway; or that the fix is already in so the act of voting is just a hollow formality; or that there are no consequences for not voting, only for voting for the wrong candidate or the wrong party.

If the unfolding events both locally and nationally this week don’t offer them a clear insight as to just how backwardly erroneous this thinking is, nothing will.

A few hours down Interstate 95 in Washington, D.C., we were forced to watch as President Barack Obama caved in to the interests of Big Money when he extended his predecessor’s tax cuts for the richest Americans in exchange for a few more months of unemployment benefits for the poorest Americans.

It was a sad display, and not because Obama chose to chastise his progressive base, who he knew would howl and scream at his administration’s spineless capitulation – but because by couching the decision as “compromise”, he demonstrated that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say what lies at the root of his political about-face.

The fact is that this compromise would not have been necessary had the Democrats not lost 63 seats in the House last month. That shifting of the balance of power serves not only to strengthen the Republican agenda - but to effectively water down, if not completely wash away, many of those progressive “Yes, we can!” initiatives in the legislative pipeline.

And those seats would not have been lost if the rank and file Democrats in those districts had seen this week’s surrender – and whatever right-wing horrors are next to come - as a natural consequence of their not voting.

A good part of the blame for both the unconcerned apathy of the Left and the wild-eyed anger of the Right belongs squarely at the feet of the Democratic Party, which has proven lately that when it comes to sleaze, corruption, and looking out for greedy personal interests, it takes a back seat to no one.

And nowhere in America has this proven more true, and for more consecutive decades, than here in Philadelphia.

We’ve become so accustomed to viewing corruption and graft as the way things get done, we can scarcely imagine an alternative. Before you even consider running for office in this town, you have to first seek the approval of party bosses, kiss up to connected ward leaders, grease the right committee people, staffers, and friends of friends; and shake hands with the Devil while begging for financial backing from the fat cats who always, always want something in return.

Last month Deputy City Commissioner Renee Tartaglione Matos resigned, four days after the Board of Ethics found probable cause that she violated the city charter. Renee Tartaglione Matos is the daughter of longtime City Commissioner Marge Tartagione, sister of State Senator Christine Tartaglione, and the wife of 19th ward leader Carlos Matos, recently released from prison after doing time for bribery.

She admitted to nine violations of the charter involving political activity, including accepting checks for street money, and actively campaigning against State Rep. Angel Cruz, a political enemy seen as a threat to her sister’s Senate seat. Cruz, by the way, has enough problems of his own, with the Pennsylvania Attorney General breathing down his neck for alleged violations involving improprieties with his nominating petitions.

The City Commissioner’s Office is the taxpayer-funded entity charged with overseeing Philadelphia’s election process, and making sure our elections are fair, legal, and unsullied by corruption. (I tried to type that sentence with a straight face. I really did try.)

For me, though, here’s the worst part: we, the voters and taxpayers, barely bat an eye when we hear these things. State liquor store warehouse employees selling booze off the loading dock; clerks at Licenses and Inspections giving trade licenses to whoever comes up with enough bribe money; agency heads fixing parking tickets in exchange for free food – and we just shake our heads, sigh, and turn to the sports page.

Our political system – corrupt, venal, and self-serving as it may be, is wholly dependent upon our sense of right and wrong to keep it running or to trade it in for a new model.

For what we end up with, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Know When To Hold ‘Em, When To Fold ‘Em

A couple of weeks ago we covered the controversy surrounding McFadden’s bar, an Old City nightspot being sued by an employee for racial discrimination.

As expected, Philly’s blogosphere was set on fire by the folks who love to scream “race card” whenever an incident involving racism hits the news.

Here’s how it works: You’re denied a table in a nearly empty restaurant, or a real estate broker steers you to a neighborhood where you’ll be ‘more comfortable’, or a bartender serves you a drink, but breaks the glass afterward. (In case you’re tempted to label these scenarios as wild or impossible, each has happened to me at least once in my lifetime. If you’re a person of color, I’m willing to bet you have a few stories of your own.)

Anyway, you complain to the proper authorities about the discriminatory treatment, hoping to find a solution which serves the cause of justice and human decency. What you get instead are a never-ending lineup of doubters, naysayers, and people who will tell you that you’re being too sensitive, or that you’re just looking for problems where none exist; or more likely, that you’re just angling for a frivolous lawsuit and a quick payday.

In other words, you’re playing the race card.

It’s become another all-purpose catch phrase used to belittle the complaint, and cast doubt on the motives of the complainer. And no, it doesn’t matter whether the complaint is valid or legitimate – in fact, blaming the ‘race card’ works best when the racism is most obvious.

Take McFadden’s, for example.

There was plenty of huffing and puffing on local blogs and comment boards about McFadden’s newly restrictive dress code – hats, white t-shirts, team jerseys, baggy pants and gold jewelry were forbidden at the Old City location, but not the McFadden’s at Citizen’s Bank Park.

Also a hot topic was the motivation of the complainant, Michael Bolden, an African-American bartender at McFadden’s who happens to hold down a day job as a lawyer. Well, that was about all the ‘race card’ throwers could stand, and all the information they needed.

After hearing that tidbit, it didn’t matter one bit whether Bolden was deliberately given duties and shifts designed to keep his black face away from the front of the bar, where he might upset the patrons’ delicate sensibilities. It also didn’t matter that the bar’s managers made that fact crystal clear in internal memos and text messages like, “So let’s get back to basics and make the necessary changes by fading away that clientele from the bar and behind the bar”, in reference to McFadden’s Alternative Wednesday’s promotion. Those “basics” presumably being to discourage any alternatives to the bar’s whiteness.

And it especially didn’t matter if that same manager, identified as Walt Wyrsta, sent another text message openly saying, “We don't want black people, we are a white bar.”

What matters is that Bolden is Black, and had the audacity to point out an incident of racism. Therefore, he must have played the race card. Further, Bolden is an attorney – which in itself is proof that he’s just looking to make a fast buck.

So with a smug, dismissive keystroke, the bloggers and comment posters waved off the whole shameful affair, going back to their usual routine of living in their mom’s basement and hating everyone with dark skin.

Then a funny thing happened this week.

The owners of McFadden’s and Bolden reached a quick and amicable settlement, but with an interesting turn of events. Bolden asked for - and received - no money whatsoever. That’s right, not one dime.

Leaves the “he’s just playing the race card for a fast buck” crowd twisting in the wind, doesn’t it?

As part of the settlement, McFadden's will hire an outside human resources firm to establish equal employment policies, and will institute mandatory anti-discrimination training programs for all of its employees. McFadden's will also monitor its hiring, promotion, work assignment and termination decisions, and submit written progress reports to the court for one year.

As a bonus, McFadden’s also fired Wyrsta, although that wasn’t part of the settlement.

So could it be that Bolden was actually telling the truth about McFadden’s racist policies? Could it be that he really was interested in seeking justice and fairness for himself and future employees, and not just hard cash? Could it also be that McFadden’s owners, seeing that further resistance would only cause more damage, quickly agreed to right the wrongs?

Could it be then, that ‘playing the race card’ is more often simply a matter of playing the cards you were dealt?

From Black Friday to Pitch Black January

In case you wanted to know, or even cared; the origins of the term ‘Black Friday’ are varied and widely disputed.

The simplest theory is that it was so named because it’s the first official day of the holiday shopping season. Retail merchants in the old days would use red ink in the ledger books to denote losses, and black ink to denote profits. When the shopping began in earnest, usually the Friday after Thanksgiving, merchants could gleefully switch to black ink, and use it for the rest of the year.

Also floating around is the story that it began with a highly respected department store floor walker named Mr. Black, who died on that Friday in 1964. As all anniversaries eventually become excuses for door buster sales and newspaper inserts that fall out in your lap, Black Friday joined President’s Day, Memorial Day, and all the rest in offering low, low prices and easy layaway plans.

The earliest reference to the term ‘Black Friday’ has its roots in Philadelphia. From a New York Times article dated November 29, 1975: “Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it ‘Black Friday’ - that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army-Navy game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year.”

Whatever its genesis, for most of us, Black Friday is the first day of the holiday siege.

From now until the end of the year, we’ll be bombarded day and night by fat men in red suits, deliberately annoying holiday-themed commercial jingles, and Nat “King” Cole’s ‘The Christmas Song’ over and over in an endless loop until our ears bleed.

And then there are the lights – thousands upon thousands of lights which seemingly appear from nowhere - twinkling inside and outside every home, encircling every tree, and strung across telephone wires in neighborhoods from the poorest to the most affluent.

Allow me to play the Grinch here, breaking up your holiday cheer and goodwill toward men for a moment to propose the following nightmare scenario: After nearly two months of burning all those pretty lights 24 hours a day, and your increased use of the kitchen appliances from preparing all those holiday meals, sometime in January you get your electric bill from PECO.

Admit it. At the mere mention of the name, your blood ran cold for a second there.

You know the bill is coming, and you know it’s going to hurt.

It may also interest you to know that on January 1, 2011, PECO Energy’s rate caps will expire. You don’t have to be an economist to figure out what happens when regulators end the restrictions on how much a company can charge its customers. You’ll find out for sure, though, when you open that electric bill.

Fortunately, there is hope. OK, it’s only a dim, faraway glimmer of hope, but hope nonetheless.

Utility monopolies like PECO get a distribution fee for the cost of maintaining the infrastructure, but customers can comparison shop for another company that generates the actual electricity, which accounts for up to 60 percent of your electric bill.

About a dozen alternative electricity suppliers are offering discounts up to 10 percent off PECO's 2011 supply rates. Those companies are now actively targeting the Philadelphia area, looking to peel off as many disgruntled PECO customers as possible. You may have already gotten a flyer or phone call from one of them, offering to save you $10 a month off your electric bill. Some offer fixed rates and even discounts for seniors and veterans.

The cost of generating the electricity, and the number you should shop around for is the price-to-compare (PTC). After January 1, PECO's PTC for residential customers will be 9.92 cents per kilowatt hour, kicking up again in April to 10.16 cents. Some of the alternative suppliers are promising PTC’s between 8 and 9 cents. Of course, PECO still gets their 5.96 cents per kilowatt hour distribution charge, and their $7.25 monthly customer charge, no matter which supplier you choose.

Even in the best case scenario, switching suppliers will probably save you no more than a few bucks per year, a fact I’m sure PECO would quickly point out. But these days, every dollar counts.

So go ahead and get merry. Spend money like a drunken sailor, stuff your turkey and stuff your stockings, and light up your entire property like a Las Vegas casino.

January’s coming.

Jim Crow and Jack Daniels

Let’s be honest and admit one thing up front – there are at least as many bars as there are churches in Philadelphia, and both tend to practice a sort of self-imposed segregation. There’s an old saying that Sunday at 11 AM is the most segregated hour in America, and to some extent that’s true. It is similarly true if you extend that to Happy Hour on any given Friday.

Philly really does have White bars, Black bars, Latino bars and Asian bars. Go into one, and you’ll know immediately. While very few are openly hostile to outsiders, and you can have a quiet drink in just about any tavern if you pay your tab and mind your business, there is often an undeniable sense of not belonging – and that all the other patrons are watching you closely.

It is also true that there are a growing number of multicultural, multiethnic bars in the city. There you’ll see people of all races, ages, and ethnicities mingling and enjoying each others company – but I suspect these places are more the exception than the rule.

I’ve never been to McFadden’s Bar on North 3rd Street in Old City, the subject of this week’s media buzz. A bartender has sued the establishment on the basis of racial discrimination, contending that management willfully contrived to keep African-American patrons away. The bar’s lawyers, quite naturally, vigorously deny the allegations.

At issue in the lawsuit – and the bar’s response - are two main points, and both must be addressed to see the big picture.

First, that the bar’s “Alternative Wednesday’s” a weekly promotion run by an African-American party promoter and which attracted a mostly young, African-American crowd – was bringing with it a bad element.

Neighbors complained of hip-hop blaring from cars in the parking lot while young Blacks loitered, openly smoked weed and loudly disturbed the peace. Police had to be called several times, there were isolated incidents of violence, and the bar stopped the promotion.

OK, that’s fair enough – no bar owner wants his establishment labeled a ‘nuisance bar’, and most take steps to avoid that designation.

But that doesn’t explain the text messages, allegedly sent from one McFadden’s manager to another regarding dropping the Alternative Wednesday promotion that "We don't want black people, we are a white bar!"

Not “we don’t want the criminal element”, or even “we don’t want troublemaking thugs”, but “We don’t want black people”. There is a huge difference – unless you’re a racist.

Interestingly, while a McFadden’s spokesperson did call the text message “offensive and reprehensible”, and suspended the manager pending an investigation, no mention of the text was made in their official response to the lawsuit.

Instead, the response focused mainly on the other possibly discriminatory issue, and the one more easily addressed: the dress code.

McFadden’s instituted a dress code that prohibits baggy pants, baseball hats, work boots, plain white t-shirts, hoodies, athletic jerseys, and visible gold chains. They deny this policy is aimed at any particular race or demographic, but is an honest effort to keep the place upscale.

To be fair, I have visited quite a few Black bars with similar ‘no hoodies or saggy pants’ dress restrictions displayed, and I’m confident the purpose was not to keep out Black people, but to single out potential troublemakers.

I’m not sure the same holds true for McFadden’s.

For many narrow-minded types, the above restrictions constitute exactly what Black people wear, and therefore if you keep out Blacks, you keep out trouble. That idea is not only discriminatory, it is laughably stupid. Proof of this can be found at the bar’s other location.

While I have never visited the McFadden’s in Old City, I have been to the one attached to Citizen’s Bank Park. The McFadden’s at the ball park doesn’t have a dress code, and indeed, just about everyone in the place is wearing a team jersey or ball cap – despite the fact that very few of the bar’s patrons are ethnic minorities. It is, however, often crammed with rowdy, drunken white guys, many of whom are overflowing with testosterone and ready to fight.

David Sale Jr., a 22-year old from Lansdale, found that out in July 2009 when he was beaten to death in the parking lot following a dispute in McFadden's. Since none of Sale’s assailants were Black or Brown, it’s hard to argue effectively that keeping out minorities keeps out trouble.

If you want to attract certain people to your bar, change the drink prices, change the songs on the jukebox, or change the atmosphere.

First though, you might want to change your attitude.

Time Marches Backward

Unlike many of my friends and colleagues, I have managed to take several positive notes out of the public whupping Democrats took this week, both in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

Yes, I know the governor’s mansion and state legislature have dramatically changed hands; ditto the U.S. House. And yes, I have watched the emergence of the Tea Party in wide-eyed horror at their blatant racism and obsession with marching America back in time.

They seem blissfully unaware that the good old days of the early 20th century were only good if you were white and rich. Or perhaps they are fully aware, and don’t care. Their new leader, freshly minted U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, has publicly stated his belief that private business owners should have the right to discriminate against whomever they’d like, and for whatever reason they’d like.

This decidedly Libertarian stance is based on the theory that the free market will regulate itself; and business owners would rather take the money from minorities, or gays, or whomever “the others” happen to be, than see it go to their competitors.

Only someone who has never been a minority, or gay, or an “other” could spout this nonsense with a straight face.

But back to my positive notes.

First, most of the truly certifiable lunatics of the Tea Party; those wild banshees whose views are slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, have gone down to defeat.

Foaming-at-the-mouth Carl Palladino in New York would have turned unused prison space into dorms where welfare recipients could learn personal hygiene. That hideous gargoyle Sharron Angle of Nevada’s next elected position will probably be Grand Dragon of the KKK. California’s Meg Whitman was a cartoonishly self-involved villain straight out of a James Bond movie – all she needed was a facial scar and a white cat. And our own homegrown train wreck, Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, somehow surpassed even Sarah Palin in her ability to dig a deeper hole of stupidity with every word she uttered.

If any of these people had been elected to the high offices they sought, their states may have never recovered.

Instead, and this is actually another positive – the GOP wave represents a new group of politicians who don’t necessarily like their own party’s leadership or direction. Presumptive Speaker of the House John Boehner, he of the perpetually orange tan, will have his hands full with new members who are not beholden to party leaders, and take great pride in their general lack of intelligence and political savvy.

Here in Pennsylvania, the people have elected as Governor Tom Corbett, who quickly embraced New Jersey’s bombastic, union-busting Chris Christie as his hero and role model.

I rather doubt Corbett has the stomach, or the ability, to mount a genuine slash-and-burn administration like Christie has, or show Christie’s willingness to debate toe-to-toe with his critics. Sure, he won’t mind giving massive tax breaks to gas drillers at Marcellus Shale, but he’d rather not have to explain it in detail – least of all to poor Pennsylvanians.

But it might be fun to watch him try.

I say “fun” strictly from the position of a newspaper columnist whose livelihood often depends on mocking the folly of elected officials. On this score, given his tendency for a big fat gaffe or faux pax every third sentence, Corbett is almost a sure bet. If you’re a public employee, or a pensioner, or a teacher, or currently unemployed, it won’t be much fun at all.

If Christie is his model governor, stand by for cuts that threaten public education and public safety, with the pain spread evenly among the middle class and the poor. Say goodbye to health care reform, and hello to record insurance industry profits. Sure, state taxes will go down, but the spike in your local property taxes will more than make up the difference. And get ready for the long march backward to the days of fewer state regulations to protect coal miners in western Pennsylvania, or to punish environmental polluters here in the east.

I say let Corbett have his chance. Let him stand in front of the electorate and make his case to turn sick and poor people out into the street, while handing the keys to the store to Big Oil and Big Insurance.

Let him explain why 2010 is starting to look more like 1930.

This week’s election speaks truth to my favorite quote by H.L. Mencken, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Dodge the Mud and Vote Anyway

There are two things for which we can be grateful this election season. First, it’s almost over. And second, we haven’t been nearly as bombarded with negative political ads as have some parts of the country.

Sure, there are the usual barbs and snide innuendo you’d expect in races as close as ours, but nowhere near the vitriol heard in other campaigns.

As of this writing, both of Pennsylvania’s big races are a statistical dead heat – Democrat Dan Onorato and Republican Tom Corbett are statistically neck-and-neck in the fight to succeed outgoing governor Ed Rendell, while their party counterparts Joe Sestak and Pat Toomey are locked in a dead heat for Arlen Specter’s old seat in the U.S. Senate.

And while there has been a bit of mud flung in both directions, both campaigns have stayed fairly close to the issues and away from petty personal attacks and blatant demagoguery - at least in comparison to the madness perpetrated nationwide.

In Nevada’s senate race for example, where Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle is nipping at the heels of Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it’s gotten uglier than any political campaign I’ve seen in quite some time.

Where she certainly could have attacked Reid on legitimate GOP platform issues – Reid’s coziness with the Obama administration and his foot-dragging on the overhaul of federal mining laws, for example – her campaign has chosen instead to focus on fear mongering the illegal immigration problem, shamelessly scapegoating Latinos as the cause of every societal ill from youth gangs to bad breath.

The latest in Angle’s series of 30 second campaign commercials is easily the most racist spot since George Bush the Elder’s infamous Willie Horton ad.

The ad starts with images of the U.S. – Mexican border being breached by dark-skinned, tough-looking young men as the announcer ominously intones, “Waves of illegal aliens streaming across our border, joining violent gangs, forcing families to live in fear.”

Of course, when they get to the “forcing families to live in fear” part, the image switches to a worried-looking white couple. It only gets worse from there.
It is a visual of every possible negative stereotype of Mexican youth – tattooed, bandana-wearing, low rider-driving criminals looking to disrupt the lives of innocent white Americans. Harry Reid, the announcer continues, does nothing to protect those good Americans, by voting against making English the national language, and worse, siding with Obama and –gasp! – the President of Mexico in opposing Arizona’s draconian immigration laws.

Never mind that the state of Nevada doesn’t share a border with Mexico – or that El Paso, Texas, the border crossing shown in her ad, is 725 miles from Las Vegas, or that more than 25 percent of Nevada’s voters claim Latino or Hispanic heritage. No need to let facts get in the way of a good boogeyman scare tactic.

Last week, in attempting to smooth over critics at a meeting with Nevada’s Hispanic Student Union, Angle said, “I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”

To be fair, Democrats too have wallowed in the sleaze of late, namely in Louisiana, where Republican Senate incumbent David Vittner has been crudely and repeatedly reminded by opponent Charlie Melancon of Vittner’s dalliance with prostitutes a few years ago. And in California, political veteran Jerry Brown’s campaign manager described opponent Meg Whitman with an extremely unflattering euphemism usually reserved for prostitutes.

There have been hard hitting ads in the local races, to be sure, but at least Corbett went after Onorato on his record regarding taxes and unemployment. He didn’t make fun of the man’s hair plugs, for crying out loud. And Sestak has pounded away on Toomey’s cozy relationship with Wall Street and outsourcing jobs to China, but he didn’t stoop to call his opponent filthy names.

For this, I suppose we should be grateful.

Our negative ads haven’t been nearly as negative as those seen elsewhere this political season. Still, it’s a sickening trend that by all indications is going to get sicker.

No matter how often the electorate complains about negative campaigning, it always comes down to mud slinging with a couple of weeks to go. Lately though, that mud slinging has been followed by head stomping, false arrests, and avoiding the media at all costs.

It’s a $2 billion circus, my friends, and we’ve all paid the price for admission. I have to admit, though, that I’m half-seriously considering switching my affiliation to The Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

Now there’s a cause I can get behind.

Burning Down The House

Ask any group of elementary-school aged boys what they’d like to be when they grow up, and a number of them will respond: firefighter.

Society at large has had a love affair with the profession since its inception, and for good reason: firefighters are the very embodiment of the phrase ‘public servant’. They respond to disastrous emergencies, often at great personal peril, with the selfless bravery, guts and fortitude we all wish we possessed.

We point, with great pride, to the heroic actions of the firefighters in New York on September 11; at the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, and Center City Philadelphia’s Meridian Plaza inferno in 1991.

They are our heroes, and we have a natural tendency to stick up for them. Even folks who traditionally have nothing nice to say about the police would never bad mouth the fire department.

This could explain why you didn’t hear much of a public fuss last week when an arbitration panel awarded city firefighters a four-year contract award which includes three percent annual raises for the next three years. The firefighters’ contract could cost Philadelphians an estimated $146 million over the next five years, including nearly $80 million in health-care costs.

With the city facing economic meltdown, and many departments forced to cut services, salaries and personnel; the firefighter’s contract seems like a fat one, and Mayor Michael Nutter has said he will appeal the arbitrators’ decision.

The Philadelphia Fire Department employs about 2,100 uniformed officers and 110 civilian employees, who responded to 221,000 emergency medical calls and 48,000 fire calls last year. Also in 2009, the 30 people who perished in city fires represented the lowest in history, down from 39 in 2008, and well below the 52 deaths in both 2005 and 2006.

Facing a $1 billion budget deficit, the Nutter administration closed seven fire companies last year, and then instituted the controversial “rolling brownouts” – rotating temporary closings of selected fire stations, in an effort to save an additional $3.8 million in overtime.

Administration officials say the 56 engine companies and 27 ladder companies remaining are still too many, since the city’s population has decreased there are fewer fires, and improved firefighting techniques which make the department more efficient.

That’s a hard sell with residents who watch their homes and belongings burned to cinders, and with neighborhoods left with fire-scarred rowhouses. It is, as you can imagine, an especially hard sell with the firefighters themselves, who point anecdotally to houses and victims who may have been saved but for a rolling brownout that day at their neighborhood fire house.

To its credit, the city has joined with fire officials who called for an independent, state-run study and assessment of Philadelphia’s fire department. Everything from work rules to deployment strategies to management structure would be evaluated in light of the city’s needs, population, and budget restraints.

The key word here, of course, is independent – since firefighters are suspicious of city bean counters putting dollars ahead of public safety, and city officials fear unions will circle the wagons around their members, no matter the burden on taxpayers. Both sides have more than enough evidence to back up those suspicions.

Having spent many years as a newspaper reporter, I’ve covered my share of fires. Even in those fires that don’t result in bodily injury or fatality, the sense of loss is overwhelming. Sometimes, in an attempt to be encouraging, you’ll hear someone say about the loss of property, “Well, that’s just material things, and material things can be replaced.”

Having witnessed it so many times, I respectfully disagree.

A fire doesn’t just destroy easily replaceable items like television sets and clothing. Far too many items destroyed by fire can never be replaced, at any price. Photos of dead grandparents, college graduations and baby’s first steps; precious heirlooms passed from parent to child – everything from the family Bible to those ticket stubs from the World Series – all gone.

To walk through a home after a fire is a sad, sobering event – even for a supposedly objective news reporter. It is impossible to do so without wondering if the affected family will ever be whole again. A home is far more than the sum total of material possessions inside.

No one doubts the commitment of firefighters, or questions their worth. Even at twice their salary they’d still be underpaid, and we’re lucky to have every last one of them.

But when times are tough, everything has to be put on the table. Even our heroes.

Them’s Fightin’ Words

Some fairly recent developments have prompted me to question white folks’ sanity. (OK, in fairness, there are some white folks whose sanity has always been in question.)

I refer specifically to the modern trend of proudly wearing racism as a badge of honor, and even more specifically, to the mindset that it’s fine to use the n-word, even in front of n-words. Not only has the syndrome worsened, its tacit approval by like-minded white folks is likely to get someone killed, or at the very least punched in the mouth.

If you read as many Internet blogs and newspaper comment sections as I do, you’ve probably noticed it too.

Since Michael Vick’s signing last year by the Philadelphia Eagles, and especially since his elevation last week to starting quarterback - local pundits, bloggers and blowhards have not minced words in their racially-tinged denunciations of not just the player himself, but his African-American fan base.

Even a cursory glance at the comments section on philly.com will send chills up your spine. A few examples: “Vick has stained the franchise and it will take years for the smell to subside. The only fans Vick has are in the city and slums, where the people there have no morals anyway.” How about: “Black people are Vick fans regardless of what he did. The scum protect their own. It’s like the OJ Simpson trial.” And my personal favorite: “The problem with this country is the blacks are too lazy to go to school and get jobs.”

For more evidence of this widespread epidemic, you need look no further than the hand-made signs proudly held aloft by the knuckle-dragging morons at GOP and Tea Party rallies. You’ve seen them – President Obama as an African witch doctor, complete with a bone through his nose. Or the White House lawn covered in watermelons. A few years ago, this would have shocked even other white folks into repudiating the behavior. Today, the slightest peep of protest from African-Americans to this foul racism is met by complaints of “political correctness” and “playing the race card.”

Last summer, celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton got into a physical altercation with singer will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas. While their stories differ on whether Hilton called the singer the n-word, or as Hilton claims, a nasty epithet usually reserved for gays, the result was that Perez ended up with a black eye.

In later defending himself on his blog, Hilton wailed that no matter what he said, will.i.am is at fault because he responded with violence, while Perez only engaged in words. Words, no matter how offensive or inflammatory, he argued, should never be met with violence.

At the time, I laughed off this assertion as naiveté on Hilton’s part, assuming that all white people know instinctively that calling a black man the n-word to his face almost always ends in a black eye.

Turns out, I was the one who was naïve.

Earlier this week, there was a dust up following the Chicago Bears – Green Bay Packers game. On his way into the tunnel leading to the locker room, Green Bay safety Nick Collins stopped to argue with a Bears fan, and then threw his mouthpiece in the fan’s direction. Collins later said the fan spit on him and called him the n-word, and the NFL is investigating the matter.

More interesting than the actual event, though, was the reaction of many fans on sports websites. Calling Collins everything from unprofessional to crybaby, they argued that a professional athlete should take whatever fan abuse is heaped upon him, citing the old “sticks and stones” defense.

Like Perez Hilton, they believe that Collins’ reaction was over the top, and since those people call each other the n-word every day, why should that word be taboo for white people?

You also heard it a couple of months ago from talk radio’s Dr. Laura Schlesinger, who repeated the n-word like a broken record on her show. Ironically, the caller was asking Schlesinger’s advice on how to deal with her white husband’s friends, who casually and repeatedly used the word in her presence.

For the last time, white folks, here’s the reality: Calling a black man the n-word is going to get your butt kicked. Consider it an overreaction if you’d like, but you’re still going to get your butt kicked. Debate African-Americans’ own unfortunate use of the word, but it’s a debate you’ll be having from your hospital bed.

Something to think about before you start yelling it at an Eagles’ game.

Straining Out The Gnat

There’s an old saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

In Philadelphia this week, it’s been more like, “While the superficial things may change, the really important stuff stays the same.” I’ll explain:

This week marked the inaugural trial balloon for the long-awaited Sugarhouse Casino, which has been more than five years in the making, and the subject of hot debate every step of the way.

Neighbors and community organizations in the nearby Fishtown area have been opposed from the beginning. Their fear is that the glitzy casino will bring increased crime, traffic jams, parking nightmares, open prostitution and general drunken stupidity to the neighborhood like never before – and frankly, they have a point.

Casino supporters, on the other hand, cite the hundreds of jobs the casino brings the city in a down economy, lick their chops over the potential billion dollars in tax revenues from the venue and see Sugarhouse as the goose that laid the golden egg. They, by the way, have a point too.

In the end, the casino will gleefully strip cash from the sweaty palms of desperate people trying to find a quick way out of debt; neighbors will suffer and complain about the traffic and parking, and the rest of the city will go about its daily business.

We’re also spending a great deal of time and a couple of barrels of ink talking about Michael Vick’s sudden promotion to Eagles’ starting quarterback. Happens all the time in the NFL, but because it’s Vick, its national news, and the talk of the town.

Vick is the superior quarterback over Kevin Kolb right now, concussion fully healed or not. Kolb stunk to high heaven all pre-season, and right up until the moment he left the field in the opener against Green Bay with a pounding headache and a mouth full of grass and dirt.

Michael Vick, on the other hand, has clearly matured as a player. The old Vick was a threat with his legs, no doubt about it, but he was undisciplined; running wildly without looking downfield. The new Vick is also a threat with his legs, but maturity makes him twice as dangerous. Now he uses his running ability as a psychological threat – freezing the defense in place while he scrambles around in the pocket.

They can’t afford to take their eyes off him, because he can take off like a jet at any second - but they can’t afford to leave their receiver either, because the new Vick is looking downfield while he scrambles, and will fire one right to the open man.

I’m happy to see the brother finally come into his own, and it really does appear that he has learned a lot about football - and about life - since his public downfall. But let’s be honest, it’s just football, and next year he could be playing somewhere else.

Less ink and less time has been spent this week on a subject that hasn’t changed much in any of our lifetimes, and has become as famous a Philadelphia tradition as water ice and mustard pretzels – police brutality.

The videotaped beating of West Philly’s Askia Sabur, 29, outside a takeout restaurant on Lansdowne Avenue last week sparked community outrage and protest, as well it should have.

Given the circumstances and the extent of his injuries, there is plenty of evidence the arresting officers were unduly aggressive in Sabur’s apprehension, and in their treatment of the gathering crowd – including one woman who alleges she was roughed up for shooting the incident with her camera phone.

But that level of aggression is not uncommon, and has been popular since the days when Frank Rizzo ruled the city with an iron fist and a baton in his cummerbund. The police baton was then, and is now, the preferred method of dealing with community members who make the mistake of giving an officer a little too much lip on the wrong day. As just as in the 1970’s, that beatdown might come at the hands of a black officer as quickly as a white one. The only modern difference is that thanks to cheap technology, today thousands of people get to watch it on YouTube.

Not to get all biblical on you, but our sidetracked attentions this week remind me of that verse in Matthew 23 about straining out the gnat while we gulp down the camel.

How’s that camel taste, by the way? Mine is a little tough.

The ‘Low Information’ Revolution

Some week, huh?

The crazier-than-ever Teabaggers are gaining a national foothold, and seem determined to throw grenades at everyone in office, especially Republicans. A few miles down I-95, good ol’ Mike Castle, a fixture in Delaware politics since the Civil War, was unceremoniously booted from public life Tuesday night by losing the GOP primary race for U.S. Senate to a previously unknown woman named Christine O’Donnell, whose only actual occupation anyone can find seems to be as official spokesperson for the lunatic fringe.

O’Donnell’s platform goes far beyond the standard right-wing harangue about abstinence. No sir, that’s not nearly conservative enough. Her principal advocacy is an all-out effort to stem the widespread epidemic of people engaging in – how to put this delicately - let’s just call it self-love, shall we? It’s a form of lust, says O’Donnell, and all who engage in the act are doomed to Perdition. She’s been spreading the word, and even founded an organization dedicated to ending the practice once and for all.

Uh-huh. Good luck with that one. (Just so you know, I typed the m-word into my online Thesaurus and got “No Results Found”. Clearly no one at Merriam-Webster went to my junior high school.)

Despite endorsements from local and national GOP leaders, Castle, the former state legislator, congressman and governor, was ousted - not so much by Christine “Hands Free” O’Donnell, who is obviously nuts - but by a Republican electorate increasingly willing to endorse frothing-at-the-mouth Tea Party maniacs over their own tried and true party politicians.

It’s happening in Nevada, Kentucky, and even New York, where Teabagger Carl Paladino put a whipping on perennial GOP favorite Rick Lazio Tuesday for the party’s gubernatorial nomination. Paladino, you’ll recall, is the candidate who advocates transforming New York’s unused prison space into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could take lessons in ‘personal hygiene’. In his spare time he also enjoys sending racist and obscene e-mail blasts depicting President Barack Obama and wife Michelle in the most foully offensive ways possible.

Most Democrats – grasping desperately to maintain their tenuous control of the House and Senate - are giddy with delight at the prospect of facing these certified lunatics in November, sure in their conviction that the voting public will see the light of wisdom and common sense and reject this slate of mouth-breathers.

I’m not so sure. In a time when intellectualism is unfashionable, people react most favorably to the outrageously stupid. Wily politicians, in their natural gravitation toward the lowest common denominator, will gladly champion this previously ignored constituency of inbred knuckle-draggers to catapult themselves to high office.

In short, I think the same yahoos who have turned the Republican party on its elephant ear this year are capable of some success in November, if for no other reason than their uncanny ability to tap into the psyche of what they themselves cynically refer to as ‘low information voters’.

Switching gears to a more positive note, I couldn’t complete this column without a word about President Obama’s trip to Philly this week, to give the national back-to-school pep talk at Masterman, which was simulcast to schools across the country.

There had been some backtalk leading up to the event about the choice of schools, since Masterman is filled with the best and the brightest, and whose parents, teachers, and support staff are engaged and focused. The argument is that perhaps the president’s message of ‘work hard, stay in school, and stay out of trouble’ would have been better served at a school with students who face trouble and temptation every day.

Being an elite magnet school, Masterman doesn’t take students who are struggling academically, and doesn’t take students with histories of classroom disruption or criminal activity. Few in Obama’s audience there will drop out of school, and are far more likely to end up at Penn State than the state pen.

While understanding – and not completely disagreeing with - the argument, I believe that the School District, city officials and the White House sincerely wanted to put our best foot forward. By highlighting Masterman, they hoped to set the bar high, and send the message that student academic achievement equals success in life.

It also equals success for the rest of us. These kids will soon be of voting age, and the future of our city, our state, and our nation rests on their ability to think critically and cast their ballots wisely.

We’ve seen what happens when we have a country full of ‘low information voters’.

A Bet That’s A Sure Loser

You have to wonder about these folks who leave the kids in the car while they go gambling. I think if there’s ever a solid definition of what “hooked” looks like, they fit the description.

When you’re on your hands and knees searching for crumbs of crack cocaine in the dirty carpet, you can be pretty sure you’re a drug addict. If you find yourself hiding Moon Pies and devouring them in the bathroom, you’ve probably got an eating problem. If you’re snockered at the next parent – teacher conference, you could well be an alcoholic.

And if you have to leave the children in the car while you go into the casino and spend their cereal money, you my friend, have the fever – and you’ve got it bad.

Over the summer, seven parents and caregivers have been caught gambling at Parx casino in Bensalem while their charges sweltered in hot cars outside. Amid the uproar, last week Pennsylvania state lawmakers announced plans for a bill that would make it a felony to leave children younger than 13 unattended in a vehicle.

It’s a nationwide dilemma, although state gaming boards and individual casinos are reluctant to keep statistics on the actual numbers. I’m betting their thinking is if they don’t acknowledge the problem, they won’t be charged with fixing it.

It’s a definite syndrome, though, and as the psychobabblers like to say, a cry for help.

Think about it. Who but the seriously addicted or the hopelessly stupid would leave their kids in the car in a casino parking lot?

With all the publicity surrounding the issue, you have to know that everyone walking through the lot will report your license plate to authorities the instant they walk in the door. There are security cameras, roving foot patrols, and of course your fellow gamblers, who will drop a dime on you faster than they’ll drop it in a slot machine. You could leave your kids in the parking lot at Pathmark or Rite Aid for hours without raising an eyebrow, but at casinos, they’re looking for you within minutes.

You leave children unattended in casino parking lots not at your own risk - but with the sure and certain knowledge that you’ll be caught, you’ll be prosecuted, and that slack-jawed expression on your face will be plastered all over the news.

So you have to believe the people who do it anyway are either overtaken by gambling fever, or just plain dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers.

There are some private companies who believe they have the solution. As the number of casinos expands across America, so have onsite child-care centers. One company, Kids Quest Centers, has locations in 20 casinos nationwide, and provides computer games, basketball courts, children's cafes, movies and cribs for infants as young as 6 weeks old. The flashing lights of video games and carnival atmosphere are intended to fascinate and excite youngsters while their parents are distracted by the flashing lights of the casino floor just a few feet away. Proponents say the child care centers attract high-rolling parents, and more importantly, increase casino profits.

This solution though, is fraught with hidden difficulties. Since the casino day care centers close at 2 AM, what happens when a parent doesn’t show up until 5:30? What happens when an obviously inebriated parent insists on driving their child home? What happens when casino officials have to call child services on a parent?

Lawsuits happen, that’s what. Big, fat lawsuits.

Casinos do not want the responsibility, or the liability, that comes with taking care of their patrons’ children. It’s a legal minefield, and one they’d rather avoid. They’d much rather you just walk in, empty your pockets, and leave quietly.

But I can’t really blame them for that. If you wanted to go out, say, for dinner and a movie, you’d hire a babysitter for the evening. If a babysitter wasn’t available, you’d put off the night out until you could get one. You wouldn’t expect the restaurant or the multiplex to have child care facilities, and you certainly wouldn’t just leave the kids in the parking lot.

My guess is that in the near future, some forward thinking entrepreneur will come up with a way to profit from this mess while keeping the casinos safe from legal responsibility. Until then, we’ll keep hearing the sad stories, and seeing the faces of guilty parents on the nightly news.

Maybe we should just put slot machines in jails and prisons. That way, we can save on costly prosecutions and cut out the middleman.

Prisoners 4, Public 0

As I believe I have mentioned before, part of the satisfaction of being a cynic is how often you turn out to be right.

Which is why we cynics are not surprised at the fact that the greediest, most corrupt, small-minded petty dullards in our society have managed to gain control of our vital systems. Angry, yes. But surprised? No.

An update to a recent column should serve as an example. A few months ago I used this space to bring you the tale of The Great Escape of Taaqi "Fame" Brown.

Brown didn’t tunnel out of Delaware County’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility in June, and he didn’t saw through the bars and lower himself from a rope made of dental floss. They just handed him his walking papers, opened his cell door, and sent him on his way.

A private company, Community Education Centers Inc. (CEC) of West Caldwell, N.J., has operated the prison since January 2009. The facility houses about 1,600 inmates, mostly from Delaware County and Philadelphia.

Delaware County’s District Attorney, the Prison Superintendent and the County Council were all appropriately horrified, and while chalking up the one-time mistake to “clerical error” and promising swift policy changes, they praised CEC’s overall track record.

Except that CEC’s track record, before and since, is awful, and what has happened since Brown’s walk away hasn’t helped. By the way, I only categorize Brown’s incident as ‘escape’ because that’s exactly what authorities charged him with when he turned himself in a day later.

That’s right - they let him go, and then tacked a felony escape on to his rap sheet when he returned voluntarily. No charges, however, for the CEC employees who allowed it to happen.

If you thought public embarrassment would have been enough to force CEC to swift action, and force the county authorities to more stringent monitoring, you’ve got another think coming.

Since then, Ateia Polk of North Philadelphia, and David Jeffrey Wilson of Chester, were both freed due to paperwork errors, according to the Delaware County District Attorney's Office. Authorities finally figured it out when the prisoners weren’t transported from the facility to court for scheduled hearings. By then, of course, Polk and Wilson were long gone.

A month before Brown’s walkout, prisoner Kelly DeLuca was told to pack up her personal items, and be ready to be discharged in time to catch the SEPTA bus to Chester in 90 minutes. Despite telling the guard that she had nine days left on her 18-day probation violation, DeLuca was given two tokens and shown the gate.

Now, all this should inspire outrage and consternation among the citizenry, and it has, especially in Delaware County. The County Council has again promised changes in the way prison releases would be handled, and conducted hasty meetings with CEC officials, the Prison Superintendent and County Court judges.

From now on, a sergeant and lieutenant at the prison will oversee the release process, and guards will be required to consult an internal tracking system at the county's Office of Judicial Support for release data and another tracking system run by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts.

Oh, and in addition to the current "code-red" telephone calls notifying nearby neighbors of an escape, there will now be a "code-yellow" notification call when an inmate is mistakenly released. Now they can sleep much better at night.
Still, no rebuke and no punishment for CEC, who collects millions in state dollars (and similar millions from other states from coast to coast) to keep our criminals warehoused.

CEC’s corner-cutting measures have been questioned for years, but because the $200 million company, which provides thousands of jobs nationwide, actually manages to save states’ money by operating prisons on the cheap, state legislators and prison boards tend to overlook the occasional gaffe – like poorly trained guards and support personnel letting criminals walk free.

The not-so-subtle message on the power of the bottom line is delivered by John J. Clancy, Chairman and CEO of CEC, on the company’s website.

“Government agencies can contract with us for an amount far less than is typically spent on facilities that provide fewer services,” Clancy crows. “Additionally, the government does not have to raise capital to build more jail space. Our special focus on treating the causes of criminal behavior works to drastically reduce government cost.”

As long as money trumps the public welfare, companies like CEC will thrive, nearby communities will remain on ‘code yellow’ alert, and we cynics will remain the undisputed champions of the “I told you so.”

There Goes The Neighborhood

The murder of an elderly man last week in Philly’s Cedarbrook neighborhood touched off an interesting debate, but a debate which I believe centers on the wrong premise.

George Greaves, 87, was killed in his own front yard on Pickering Street by a pair of teenagers looking to rob him. Apparently the old man, a former bodybuilder and Navy veteran, wasn’t about to be pushed around by a couple of young punks, and resisted - perhaps by pushing one of the assailants, or maybe just by not moving fast enough. Greaves feistiness was answered by a bullet to the chest, and now India Spellman, 17, and Von Combs, 14, are charged with his murder.

It didn’t take long for a handful of local bloggers and commenters on www.philly.com to attribute Greaves’ senseless murder to the changes in the neighborhood’s racial demographic. Greaves was one of the last white holdouts who remained when the neighborhood “went black” years ago.

Cedarbrook, still known as East Mount Airy to us old timers, was once mostly Jewish and Irish Catholic, until the 1960’s when more upwardly mobile African-Americans starting buying homes there. Like many neighborhoods throughout the city at the time, white folks moved out when black folks moved in.

Dire predictions of rampant crime and neighborhood decay sent whites scurrying to the relative safety of the suburbs, without a thought to exactly what types of blacks the community was attracting. Since they’re all alike, after all, there’s no need to make that distinction. The only equation that went through their minds - fueled by fear and maybe one wrong-turn trip through North Philadelphia – is that black people equals bad neighborhood.

Except the black folks who moved to Cedarbrook were pretty much the same God-fearing, hard-working, middle class citizens as the whites who ran for the hills.

They were police officers, teachers, postal workers and business owners. They swept their sidewalks regularly, kept their yards trimmed and tidy, and shoveled snow from their neighbors’ steps. Their children were polite and well mannered, and always looked neat and clean on their way to school.

In short, it was these people who made the White Flight exodus seem irrational and at the very least, premature. They weren’t the problem, and indeed, middle class black neighborhoods throughout the city continued to thrive and flourish for several more decades. A few of those communities are as stable today as they ever were.

Greaves himself probably would have agreed, since by all indications he got along quite well with his black neighbors for many years; and until last Wednesday, was a beloved neighborhood fixture.

That’s why I believe the above-mentioned blog posters and talk radio commenters are again, some 40 years later, still fighting the wrong fight. Their premise – the very basis of their argument – is way off base.

It wasn’t the White Flight of the 1950’s and 60’s that started the downhill spiral of many once-solid city neighborhoods. It was the Black Flight of the 1980’s and 90s.

You can probably blame a lot of things: like the explosion of crack cocaine in black neighborhoods, and the explosion of crime that went along with it; or the rise of gangsta rap and the violent, self-destructive behavior perpetrated by its heroes; or the migration of good jobs to the suburbs; and just for good measure, throw in the decline in the quality of public education.

No matter the cause - the result was that many black Philadelphians who could afford to move packed their stuff and retreated, often to the same suburbs that lured their white neighbors 20 years before. Too often, among them were the stable neighborhood influences: the community cleanup organizer, the elderly lady who watched everyone’s house, the man who coached Little League and took the neighborhood kids to ball games.

They also took with them a measure of the neighborhood’s pride. With fewer homeowners and more renters, there was less incentive to keep the property looking nice – that’s the landlord’s job. The elderly begin dying off, and their grown children - who have no real investment or sweat equity in the home - let it go to seed or end up renting to tenants who care even less. And with each unkempt yard, crumbling front step, and graffiti-tagged wall, the neighborhood dies a slow, painful death.

Strong middle-class communities do not become violent ghettos overnight. It takes years for systematic neglect to gain enough of a foothold to tear a neighborhood to shreds.

And it takes the rest of us to look the other way.

Stop, DROP, And Roll

Most Philadelphians have spent this week in various stages of disbelief and utter frustration. Horrified, dumbfounded, and hoppin’ mad, we have been staggered by revelation after revelation of what the general public would call thievery, chicanery, underhanded corruption and unbridled arrogance.

Those in government would probably call it The Way Things Work.

Where to begin? The city's independent study of DROP, the Deferred Retirement Option Program, despised by taxpayers yet adored by city workers, was finally made public.

Remember when then-Mayor Ed Rendell sold us this bill of goods, and his administrators promised that DROP wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime, but in fact would save money on pension payouts in the long run? Well, the study, conducted by Boston College researchers, revealed that DROP has actually cost us $258 million in extra pension expenses since its approval in 1999. And that number doesn’t even count the elected officials who have taken the money, “retired” for a day, then come back to work for their regular salaries.

Giving credit where it’s due, Rendell’s successor Mayor John Street tried to kill DROP in 2003, rightly predicting it would come back and bite us in the end. Say what you will about John Street, but no one in Philadelphia had a better understanding of the complex intricacies of the city’s budget than he did. Street’s valiant try at a DROP-killing initiative failed – nipped in the bud by the city’s unions and rank-and-file employees - and in the finest tradition of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”, Street then signed up for DROP himself.

Giving still more due credit, current Mayor Michael Nutter has picked up the fallen standard, and made his opposition to the program well known. When the results of the study were made public earlier this week, Nutter said, "We cannot afford this program any longer and it must go."

But Nutter alone can’t kill DROP. He faces the same opposition Street did, and you’d better believe the city’s union forces are again lining up in defense of the program, prepared to guard that money tree with their very lives.

City Council can kill DROP, and that’s what the mayor, and the public, wants. Except for one tiny problem – half a dozen Council members are signed up for DROP themselves, and theoretically could be voting themselves out of thousands of dollars. Even those not signed up will be subjected to the full court union press – unions which in many cases make up a substantial portion of their fundraising base.

As if the DROP fiasco wasn’t enough, we were also treated this week to the news that even in these hard economic times of double-digit unemployment and growing public despair, we’re paying some top officials like we have money to burn.

Out of a sense of sheer decency and respect for the public, the mayor, the governor, and most of their cabinets have cut their own salaries and given back raises and bonuses. People are hurting, and it doesn’t help taxpayer confidence to see their money being spent on exorbitant public salaries.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia Housing Authority Executive Director Carl Greene is pulling down $306,370, with a bonus of $44,188, up almost 10 percent from last year. By comparison, the salary of the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who’s in charge of the entire nation’s housing programs, is less than $200,000.

But what really stuck in the public’s craw was the outing of Philadelphia School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, whose paltry $338,000 salary was supplemented by a recent bonus of $65,000. The chancellor of the New York City school system, which has seven times as many students and a budget 10 times larger than ours, makes $125,000 less than Ackerman.

Recently, the residents of Bell, CA, a small suburb of Los Angeles, found out their city officials were pulling in outrageous salaries for part-time work. Rather than just grumble, they descended on city hall with pitchforks and torches, forcing administrators to quit, flee in panic, and reduce their own salaries by more than 90 percent.

If it worked in L.A., it should work here. After all, isn’t Philadelphia the place where Thomas Jefferson penned the words, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

If Jefferson was right, maybe it’s time to grab the pitchforks, light the torches and make some alterations.

To Kristen, On Her 21st Birthday

My little girl, as the old saying goes, is all grown up. I have watched your maturation into young womanhood with fascination, unbridled joy, and no small measure of pride. I see in you the limitless potential for a lifetime of great works, and the embodiment of everything I think is good and decent in this otherwise corrupt, crumbling world of liars and fools.

I remember July 30, 1989 like it was yesterday.

Your mother and I were living in my small, one bedroom apartment on Girard Avenue in North Philly. I was employed as a custom photo lab technician at Quaker Photo, at the time, one of the largest labs in the region. My job involved spending 8 to 10 hours a day in my darkroom, virtually cut off from all outside communication. (Cell phones, while they did exist back then, were only owned by a privileged few, and were the approximate size and weight of a large brick.) If a lab employee received a phone call, the person taking the call would have to find the tech, bang on the darkroom door, and wait until the tech came out, sometimes many minutes later, to relay the message. Often by that time, either the person relaying the message gave up and left the darkroom area, or the person on the other end of the line hung up.

Starting about a month before your birth, I informed each of my fellow employees, (and there were more than 100) that if I got a call from my wife I was to be summoned immediately, and without excuses. Failure to comply, I added, would result in severe consequences. As a result, for several weeks before your birth, every phone call from your mother was given the highest priority, and whenever someone knocked on my darkroom door, I came tearing out of there like a man possessed.

I needn’t have cowed and intimidated my colleagues into compliance, since, as it turns out, you were born on my day off.

I was enjoying my usual Sunday late-morning routine: several cups of strong coffee, and the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling on television. About 11:45 your mother, who was ironing clothes, called out to me that it was time. At first, I was hesitant, since we’d had a couple of false alarms, but she quickly convinced me that this was it.

It was sometime around noon when I loaded her into the car, and drove to the hospital like Mario Andretti on the last lap of the Indy 500. As I had made the trip on practice runs several times, my route was mapped out to avoid as many traffic lights and crowded streets as possible.

Then, the wait.

Because you didn’t show up until 11:30 that night, I spent most of the day at the hospital pacing back and forth and getting on your mother’s nerves. It was a long, long day for us both – but the wait was more than worth it.

After the nurse hosed you off, (believe me, it was necessary) she gave you to me. The entire wave of emotions I had been bottling up for months poured out, and I was crying as much as you were, although not as loudly. I realized, in that single moment, that everything I had done in my life until that time was trivial and insignificant. You, this tiny human being, was more important than anything I would ever accomplish, and would remain my highest priority for the rest of my life. Love, while perhaps the strongest word in our language is insufficient to define my feelings toward you.

For the first few years, I carried you everywhere I went. It got to the point that my friends were surprised to see me without a child attached to my shoulder. I learned to plait and cornrow your hair, and pick out your outfits. I was the proudest Papa the world had ever seen.

As you grew, I watched your personality take shape. You were kind, compassionate, loving, sensitive to the needs and feelings of others, and smart as a whip. You handled difficult situations, like being bullied in school, as well as anyone could be asked.

I was, as you can imagine, especially pleased with your passion for art and music. You were my band’s first (and maybe only) fan, and my band mates loved you for it. I played the bass often for you, even learning the Alphabet Song so we could duet.

I suppose I could talk about the sacrifices – like the nights spent sleeping on hard couches at Children’s Hospital, or giving up beer and other luxuries for a couple of months in order to buy you the guitar and amplifier you wanted – but when you’re a parent, those aren’t really sacrifices at all. It’s called being a father, and that’s what fathers do.

Watching you grow up to be the person you are today has been the single greatest joy of my life.

Your great love of art and design will open up worlds of new experiences for you when you graduate from college next year, and I have no doubt that your career will be a source of great satisfaction for you, and yet another source of chest-swelling pride for me.

Not that my life is not already a shrine to my daughter – I still have everything you ever gave me – from preschool drawings on scraps of paper to my Eagles shirts to my “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee cup – which I still use every day.

On this momentous day, as you officially enter adulthood, I thought it was important to let you know that you have been my beating heart and soul for 21 years, and I thank God every day for giving you to me. You are my greatest accomplishment, and my greatest inspiration. You will always be my Baby Snooks, even if I live to be 100.

If I am the World’s Greatest Dad, it is only because I have the World’s Greatest Daughter.

A Crazy Rush To Judgment

For weeks the city of Philadelphia has been riveted by the trial of the two men accused in the events leading to the killing police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski on May 3, 2008. Eric DeShann Floyd, 35, of North Philly and Levon T. Warner, 41, of West Philly each face the death penalty for their roles as accomplices in the botched bank robbery and car chase which ended with Liczbinski bleeding to death on a Kensington street.

Floyd, Warner, and 33-year old Howard Cain, who masterminded the robbery of the Bank of America at a Port Richmond ShopRite, went in the bank disguised as Muslim women, hit the place quick, and made a speedy getaway.

Moments after the three robbers left the supermarket, police had a description and license plate number of their getaway car, driven by Floyd, and seconds later Liczbinski’s patrol car was on their tail.

Unable to shake Liczbinski, Floyd stopped the car and yelled to Cain, “Bang him!” Cain jumped out and started firing with a 35-shot Chinese SKS military assault rifle. The weapon fires a .30 caliber bullet with enough punch to shred a bullet proof vest or puncture a car door. Liczbinski, who wasn’t wearing a vest, was hit eight times as he got out of his car.

Cain, the actual shooter, was himself killed by police in a confrontation later that day after he and his accomplices split up. Floyd and Warner were caught, and now face what could charitably be described as an uphill battle in court.

If you’ve been following the trial, you know much has been made of Floyd’s confrontational attitude and bizarre behavior. He wasn’t allowed in the courtroom for most of the trial, forced to watch on closed circuit after he punched out his own defense attorney in court. He’s demanded his right to act as his own advocate, and accused both the judge and his own defense team of being out to get him. He’s argued, he’s screamed, he’s ranted and raved, and he’s acted the complete fool.
Now you may conclude, as many have, that Mr. Floyd is probably mentally unbalanced, and incapable of understanding the gravity of his actions, let alone able to assist in his own defense.

Not me.

I think ol’ Eric is crazy like a fox. He may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I bet he’s smart enough to know he’s in a fight for his very life. He knows the evidence against him is overwhelming, he understands his chances with the jury are slim, and figures the only way this can end is with him strapped to a gurney upstate with a needle in his arm.

He’s understandably desperate, and as we all know, desperate men take desperate action. So what does Eric DeShann Floyd do? Take the safer road of his accomplice Levon Walker, who said nothing in his own defense – essentially throwing himself on the mercy of the court?

Or does he act out – perhaps throwing the proceedings into chaos and maybe, just maybe, giving himself the foundation for a future appeal on the grounds that a) he was denied his constitutional right to represent himself, or b) the jury was unduly influenced by his courtroom antics, or c) he’s the victim of a system out for retribution – as often is the case when a police officer goes down in the line of duty.

Sound far fetched? Well, there is some precedent. Perhaps Floyd followed another famous case in which a Philadelphia police officer was killed some years ago. In that case, the defendant argued with the judge, showed his utter contempt for the proceedings, insisted on acting as his own defense attorney after his choice of non-legal representation was denied; screamed, shouted, and was eventually bound and gagged by the judge.

Sure, that guy was eventually found guilty, but his fiery courtroom rhetoric made him a cause celebre, and his conviction became a worldwide rallying cry for opponents of the death penalty. In the end, it mattered less whether he was guilty or innocent of the actual killing than whether he was the victim of a government-inspired witch hunt, and convicted in a trial described by both his defenders and detractors as a “circus”.

But most importantly to Floyd, that guy is still alive. And if there’s the slightest chance that he too can remain alive by turning his trial into a similar circus, what does he have to lose?

That’s not what I call crazy, folks. That’s what I call self preservation.

The Death of a Picnic

It’s a sad week in Philadelphia, and on a number of fronts.

We’ve had a couple of tourists die in the Delaware river, the tragic result of a collision between a disabled Ride the Ducks tour boat and a passing barge being maneuvered by a tugboat. The accident made not just national but international headlines, as the tourists were part of a group visiting from Hungary.

The National Transportation Safety Board, Philadelphia Police, the U.S. Coast Guard, and just about every local law enforcement agency on land and sea are investigating the crash. The skipper and first mate of the tugboat pushing the barge have clammed up, and you can bet the finger-pointing, and resultant lawsuits, are going to keep this thing heated up and on the front page for months.

We were also treated this week to the news that three more Philadelphia police officers were fired and indicted for corruption and drug dealing. The scenario is so familiar around here it has become routine: A press conference featuring a somber faced Commissioner Ramsey vowing to root out the bad apples in the department, backed up by an equally dour Mayor Nutter, who tells us in no uncertain terms how angry he is.

One refreshing break from the routine: Fraternal Order of Police President John McNesby, who usually defends his officers with his last breath, immediately threw these three under the bus. He didn’t even give them the standard “innocent until proven guilty” excuse reserved for cops who are stone guilty. It’s about time the FOP stop circling the wagons around corrupt cops, and take the lead in efforts to weed them out.

We’ve tried, but we can no longer pretend to be shocked every time a police officer turns out to be more of a low-life criminal than the people he arrests every day. The confidence of the average citizen in the effectiveness of our system of justice is already at an all-time low. Every headline about a corrupt cop, judge, or city official erodes that confidence even more.

But what really struck me this week was the unofficial death of Philadelphia’s annual Greek Picnic.

I guess it has been a long time coming, but still, it’s a crying shame. The event started out so positively years ago: an annual celebration of Black fraternities and sororities, mostly from historically Black colleges. It was a reunion of sorts – networking and camaraderie, step shows and friendly rivalries.

That celebration was ruined by young rowdies - the majority of whom had never set foot on a college campus – crashing the parties while engaging in everything from drunken brawls to store looting to brazen sexual assaults.

Participation by Greek letter fraternities and sororities began to wane, while police presence and citizen paranoia increased with each year’s picnic. Even though picnic organizers warned participants to stay out of the area, hundreds of police officers, both mounted and foot patrols, descended on South Street every year in anticipation of crowd control. Merchants and store owners on the busy avenue bolted their doors and pulled down the storm shutters. Bars and restaurants closed early, owners preferring to sacrifice profit rather than risk their customers’ security. It no longer mattered that the looters and revelers had no connection to the Greek Picnic or Greek letter organizations. It was pure guilt by association – and the association stuck like glue.

This year, the Philadelphia chapter of the National Pan-Hellenic Council decided not to hold the traditional Greek Picnic. Organizers of a makeshift substitute event, Philly Greek Weekend, found their efforts in finding a venue stymied by the Greek Picnic’s unfortunate but well-documented reputation.

Delaware County officials went to court July 1 to block the Nile Swim Club in Yeadon from hosting Philly Greek Weekend events. They won. Then an alternate plan to move the picnic to Neshaminy State Park was met with objections from park officials.

Through no fault of the event organizers or fraternities themselves, the very name Greek Picnic had become poison.

Even with no official picnic planned, just the rumor of a Greek Picnic brought 20,000 teens and post-teens to South Street last weekend. A large fight erupted in the crowd, resulting in one person being Tasered and arrested. By Saturday night, bars and stores had shut down, and police cordoned off nearly the entire length of South Street.

So say goodbye to the Greek Picnic, Philly’s yearly celebration of Black college life and academic achievement – and mourn another positive tradition murdered by a small slice of the subculture with little respect for traditions, and even less respect for college and academic achievement.

Public Crime and Private Punishment

You have surely read by now about the recent case where a murder suspect was mistakenly allowed to walk out the front door of Delaware County’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility. A red-faced Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green said he had been told by prison officials that Brown was confused with another inmate with a similar name.

Oh, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the authorities vowed through clenched jaws that they’d track down Taaqi "Fame" Brown, drag him back to his cell, and charge him with escape.

Escape? Seems just a bit harsh after you opened the door to his cell, told him to leave, and then opened the prison doors to let him out.

Mr. Brown, by the way, turned himself in at a North Philadelphia police station of his own volition, and was promptly hauled back to Delaware County – to face escape charges. No charges, however, are pending for those guilty of the comedy of errors which allowed for Brown to leave unimpeded.

Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood, Mr. Gung Ho Law and Order himself, waved the whole thing off as “human error”.

You should know a little more about the humans in question, don’t you think?
Since January 2009, the George W. Hill Correctional Facility has been run by a private company, Community Education Centers Inc.,(CEC) of West Caldwell, NJ.

If that name sounds familiar, it may be due to another famous case earlier this year at a CEC-run facility in Colorado in which an employee left an inmate’s “snitch” report where other inmates could easily read it. They did, and the snitch got what snitches usually get when caught red handed. The snitch’s family, however, sued both CEC and the state.

Or it might ring a bell on account of the lawsuit filed by the family of Derek Harris, a 51 year old barber from Newark, NJ, who was arrested last spring for non-payment of parking tickets, and placed in the Essex County, NJ, facility for non-violent offenders, run by CEC. No one was watching while three fellow inmates beat Harris to death.

Don’t think I’ve picked out a few isolated incidents here folks. I invite you – no, I urge you – to simply type “Community Education Centers” and “lawsuit” into your favorite search engine. Now just start clicking on case after case, in state after state, and tell me you’re satisfied that private companies like CEC are doing a competent job in managing prisons.

Officials at the Delaware County facility where Brown made his great escape have not been returning reporters’ calls since the event. They did e-mail a statement to the Inquirer that the company's "operational track record has been exceptional."

When you think about it long and hard, that’s not really a lie, is it? Exceptionally poor is, indeed, exceptional, and I commend them on brilliantly exploiting this semantic. It’s that kind of forked tongue wordplay that makes owning a company which takes oppressive advantage of inmates so insanely profitable, especially in hard times.

The public clamors for more prisons, and provides a steady stream of inmates ready for warehousing. Politicians, pressured by the public to get these miscreants away from polite society - are equally pressured, by that same public – to hold down prison costs and slash correctional budgets.

Enter the privateer prison management company – like CEC and several others - promising to hold the line on costs while keeping us safe from the boogie men inside. So what if they cut a few corners here and there, right? Right?

John Whelan, chairman of the Delaware County Council, said County officials would review procedures with Community Education Centers to ensure that the “breach” was not repeated.

"This type of mistake is unacceptable," Whelan told reporters, in what seems an early shoo-in for Understatement of the Year.

If Taaqi “Fame” Brown is guilty of the original crime for which he was awaiting trial, the May 2, 2009, killing of 19-year old Aaron Kearney, then the mistake which allowed him to walk out was not just unacceptable, it was disastrous. Kearney was shot dead in front of about 100 people, many of them children, on an Upper Darby playground.

Still, as unsavory a character as Brown may be, it seems more than a stretch to me to hand a man his walking papers, then charge him with escape when he walks. And it is precisely because Brown constitutes such a danger to society that the burden of his “escape” should not be borne alone.

His private enterprise accomplices should share his cell.

The Few, The Proud… And The Even Fewer

You probably heard about the recent study which concluded that some 80 to 90 percent of Philadelphia’s young people aged 17 – 24 are unqualified for military service. The reasons? According to Mission: Readiness, the nonprofit group responsible for the study, they’re poorly educated, or physically unfit, or possess criminal records. Some, presumably, are all three.

The same group, by the way, puts the national rate of unfit-for-service young folks at around 75 percent, so Philly isn’t that far behind the curve, but it’s a steep curve.

There was a time when military service was almost the court of last resort for inner city youth. A scarcity of jobs and career opportunities have long been the impetus for minorities to join the military, a decision I made myself thirty years ago, and have never regretted. And we’ve all heard plenty of stories from the previous generation of veterans about borderline delinquents whose court cases resulted in the choice of a criminal record or a government-sponsored trip to Vietnam.

The point being, while the military wasn’t always necessarily the first option, at least it was always an option of necessity. Now you’re telling us that only a small fraction of our young folks even qualify to become a grunt or deck swabby? Having once been a deck swabby, I can state from experience that this position requires all the intelligence and reasoning capabilities of pocket lint.

As I recall it, the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery test wasn’t exactly rocket science. If you’ve ever been in the military, you only had to look around your barracks to know good and well the standards just can’t be that high.

This is why I am hoping beyond hope that the majority of our 90 percent are unqualified for service because of asthma or poor eyesight. Heck, I’ll take obesity and criminal records any day over the thought that our young people aren’t smart enough to pass a test that I know for sure has been passed by some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met.

Now, there is probably a contingent of parents who’ll say, “So what? I’m glad my child is unqualified for military service, considering they’ll most likely be shipped halfway around the world to fight and die on behalf of big oil.”

I would agree, but only to a point. You can certainly be happy your child won’t be asked to participate in a war you find unjust, but that’s not the same as being happy your child is unqualified for a job which requires so few qualifications.

And that’s really the overarching point of Mission: Readiness’ study. The organization, comprised of retired senior leaders from every branch of the military, is primarily concerned with making sure America maintains a sufficiently sized, well-trained army. From their website’s mission statement: “Competent, educated, and healthy young people are the future patriots tasked with defending America’s national security and prosperity. A limited recruitment pool will hold back our military readiness and erode our national security in the long run. If we want to ensure that we have a strong, capable fighting force, we need to help America’s youth succeed academically, stay physically fit, and abide by the law.”

Their solution, and one that’s hard to argue with, is increased early childhood education – putting kids on the right track long before they become teenage problems. Attending the Mission: Readiness news conference was U.S. Army Major Seth Williams, Philadelphia’s District Attorney and a longtime advocate of early education and intervention programs.

"There's a direct relationship between the lack of education, the lack of economic opportunity and too many young people feeling they have lives of hopelessness, frustration and despair," Williams said.

For the record, both Williams and Mission: Readiness are right. There is a critical need to expand programs for pre-schoolers and elementary schoolers stressing academic success and social behavior. Such programs have proven to be a good first step in the process of turning out more productive citizens, and fewer unemployable dropouts.

Where I veer slightly from the Mission: Readiness position is the proposed outcome for this new generation of academically and physically fit high school graduates.

I’m hoping they become leaders of such intelligence and character that they qualify for any job they want – regardless of our military’s state of readiness. And I’m hoping that those who do choose the military become leaders of such intelligence and character that they don’t send our young people off to wars conceived through lying and fought for profits.