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End of Days
Over the past year nobody nobody has used clearer language for a better understanding of the current financial crisis than Elizabeth Warren. She first came to my attention with her first appearance on the Daily Show.
She was on again last night. I think you can just tell how much she is working because of how much she cares, and to that end, how frustrated she is getting that nothing is happening.
So for your viewing pleasure and absolute horror...
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Elizabeth Warren | ||||
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Philly News Now, Yancey @YanceyG. Yancey @YanceyG said: Elizabeth Warren on the Daily Show: Over the past year nobody nobody has used clearer language for a better unders... http://bit.ly/9ZRx8r [...]
How time flies â just a couple of hours ago, I was writing about the long-standing deadlock over Philadelphia's fiscal relief bill in Harrisburg - and then, about half an hour ago, the deadlock seems to have ended, with the Senate passing the bill, without amendments, 32-17. (KYW reports that Mayor Nutter made an "emotional" call to his cabinet to order them to "kill Plan C."
That means â not that we're even slightly surprised â that Nutter won't, in fact, shut down every branch of the Free Library, close our courts, and lay off hundreds and hundreds of cops.
Over at Philadelphia Weekly, my colleague Joel Mathis responded to my own assertion that nearly everybody â Nutter, the media, Harrisburg itself â was enacting a kind of mass bluff, and suggested:
"Well, if itâs a bluff, maybe it worked."
I don't know. Maybe it did work. But I wonder if Mayor Nutter didn't hurt his own credibility â not with Harrisburg, but with us.
If Plan C was a bluff â and I think it was â that means that there was either another plan, that we didn't know about, or there wasn't, and Nutter fully expected the passage of this bill.
If the former is the case, shouldn't Nutter have told us about the real Plan C? Shouldn't Council have been weighing in on real contingency plans, rather than holding their breath together?
If the latter is the case, it means that our institutions â library branches, police, etc. â were props in a political theatrical production.
And Philadelphians will remember that the next time that cuts rolls around.
All that being said, some congratulations are in order â to Philly, and to Mayor Nutter. May he go for a nice bike ride or something back home in Philly.
"shouldn't Nutter have told us about the real Plan C? " um, maybe you need to look up the meaning of bluff, huh?
What Plan C could there have possibly been? There's no money folks.
What Plan C could there have possibly been? There's no money, folks.
OF COURSE IT WAS A BLUFF! Please! The whole thing was ridiculous. Explain to me how he was going to shut down the courts? Seriously? With thousands of people awaiting trial/sentencing? Were we just going to empty the jails? And, of course, stop arresting people, 'cause there'd be no cops. Bullshit! And we'll just stop picking up the trash. Right. Think that was going to apply to his neighborhood, too? Or City Council's? Not bloody likely. Shutting down libraries and parks wouldn't surprise me, 'cause we've got F'd up priorities, but I didn't EVER hear him talk about layoffs in the Revenue Dept. Hmmm. The whole thing was grandstanding, partly to give him him a way to screw the unions, and partly to make the jerks in Harrisburg feel important and in control. It's all a bunch of crap. Hey, Mike and Ed, GROW A PAIR. You don't want to be unpopular in Harrisburg, so you're gonna screw Philly? Nice. I knew a guy who always said "you're talking out your ass, 'cause your mouth knows better". There's your "plan C." PS: Can someone explain to me how NOT funding the (already under-funded) pension plan actually helps anybody? Isn't that just leaving a bigger mess for someone else to clean up in the future? Like I said, nice, real nice.
Alternate title: "Nutter Hurts Philly Retailers Even More" People shopped outside the city to save 1%. Now the threshold has been cut in half. When my bills are more than my income, I cut my spending. Of course I don't have people trapped in my living room who I can just tax, either.
My read on the "bluff" the impossiblity of not funding the courts would have built in a little more time for Harrisburg in terms of back and forths with PICA. If the city was going to make a play for an emergency alternative tax plan it would have also given Nutter more ammunition to say "he was forced". The problem with that is the PA Supreme Court Mastrangelo that stops the city from passing new taxes mid-fiscal year is very well established. Its not just been cited by dozens of subsequent decisions here in PA but actually been cited several times in other states. Also what people fail to understand, the cost of the courts would have made Plan C significantly more short of money so in terms of the impact on citizens, there is no chance that "the bluff" would have made the impact less severe.
[...] laid off a bunch of policemen, and gotten rid of trash pickup, and… wait, these things seem awfully well-chosen to piss Philly residents off), here’s a beautiful statement necklace for your favorite librarian. Each one is made of [...]
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Friday morning, signs went up on every entrance to every library in the city's system, from Central on down, reading thusly: All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries will be Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009.
Upon seeing such, I rang Andy Kahan, the Director of Author Events at Vine St.'s Free Library of Philadelphia and asked what this meant at first glance.
First is that all libraries are now in a diminishing borrowing period and that all materials will be due on October 1. As for events and readings, Kahan says, though signals are mixed, he and his staff are preparing for the worst.
"Author events would be the only program that continues and I'm in the process of negotiating with other nearby venues — just in case," says Kahan. "Parkway institutions such as Friends Select School and Moore College of Art have stepped forward and offered their auditoria to meet our need. I'm trying to figure out which authors to place where based on the size of the audience and the institutions interest and projection capacity. I'm looking to nearby institutions because, in the event we can't reach all attendees with news of the venue changes, people who just show up will know from our illuminated signs which parkway venue is hosting our event — and they won't be late to the party."
One Book, One Philadelphia programming doesn't begin until January 2010 so it's still a bit early for the Free Library's event heads to look elsewhere — but they are prepared to take events elsewhere if necessary. Kahan is, like a lot of us, hopeful that Pennsylvania representatives will heed Mayor Nutter's warnings. "On one hand the House seems willing to pass the 1% tax and pension deferments, which would allow the city to continue functioning; the Senate is not," claims Kahan. "We're optimistic they'll work through their differences before the October 1 deadline."
Kiss a librarian today. It may be one of your last chances for a while.
[...] Citypaper has more. Maybe they’re meant as warnings of what’s to come if Mayor Nutter’s taxes [...]
Don't know what to do tonight? Don't worry, we've got you covered.
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| Wendy Sitler-Roddier |
| Hi, future. You look kinda wet. |
Unfortunately, the whole living-on-the-moon thing that Scientific American and NASA have been teasing the world about for years now is, well, at a standstill. (A four-legged robot named Roony will be moving in soon, though, which is pretty cool.) Thankfully, the fringies have thought up another unexplored place to inhabit in our very own backyard! I'm talking about the seas, people. The plan is to start a nifty little government system, too, which they describe as less like the cell phone industry and more like Web 2.0. It goes something like this: "Many small governments serve many niche markets, a dynamic system where small groups experiment, and everyone copies what works, discards what doesn't, and remixes the remainder to try again." Huh. S0 one part of town tries open borders, the other tries closed borders, and whichever works out best becomes the law of the land. Doesn't sound so bad in this day and age, now does it? They're accepting applications for the next boat out er, holding a lecture on seasteading tonight.
Thu., April 9, 6-9 p.m., free, Temple University Tuttleman Hall, Room 301, 13th St. & Montgomery Ave., seasteading.org
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| The end of days. |
| weblogs.newsday.com |
According to scientists, pretty badly. Personally, I'm picturing an even more dystopic version of when the Phillies won. Frat boys will flip cars, burn their underwear and loot stores — but there won't be a parade or cleaning crews to make it all better the next day. Just a countdown to doomsday. Here's what Nels Johnson, a Nature Conservancy scientist, says about it:
Today, Philadelphia sees 20 days of 90 degrees or warmer. Under some of the climate change scenarios — the more extreme ones especially — if [we] don’t really do much to control emissions over the next several decades, we could be seeing as many as 70 or more days of 90 degrees.
Hold on, 70 days of 90 degrees is a bad thing? It's hard to think of it like that when there are dozens of sundresses in my closet collecting dust. But seriously, folks, there isn't enough Arctic Splash in the whole of Phildelphia to make that level of climate change OK. Find out how you can curb your CO2 emissions to save the city at Johnson's lecture with Wayne Klockner, vice president of the Nature Conservany.
Tue., Feb. 10, 3:30-4:50pm, free, Mitchell Auditorium, Bossone Research Enterprise Center, 32nd & Market sts., 215-895-2000, drexel.edu/sustainability/speakerseries.htm
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