|
|
|
Archive: May, 2011
Big ups to City Paper’s news editor Isaiah Thompson and staff writer Holly Otterbein, who both won big awards from the Philadelphia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Thompson got second-place honors in public service journalism, for his article on Hao Luu, a Vietnamese student who the School District blamed for violence at South Philadelphia High, but who he himself claimed, along with Asian-American activists, was the real victim — of both fellow classmates and school officials bent on spinning the real story into PR. “This journalist gave voice to a powerless teen whose life could have been changed forever over an unfair decision,” the judges wrote. "One of the media's most important service roles is to right wrongs and stick up for the most vulnerable among us. “This journalism did just that."
Otterbein won third place in political writing for her story on a local Cambodian refugee, who — after spending 24 of his 33 years in the U.S. — was facing deportation because of a crime he committed more than a decade ago. “Otterbein brings warmth and compassion to the plight of Mout Iv, a Philly man who came to the United States from Cambodia at age 9, grew up in America, made a life for himself and his family, but now has the misfortune of being targeted for deportation because of a crime he committed long ago,” the judges wrote. “Otterbein does a nice job of fleshing Iv out as a person and putting Iv's plight in context.”
Go Team Naked City!
The Inquirer reports that Karen Brown is the "apparent" champ in the GOP race for mayor, against John Featherman, winning by a difference of just 58 votes. The article notes that, "Election officials said they doubted the number of provisional ballots would change the outcome of the race."
But Carmen Seminara, acting supervisor of elections in the City Commissioners' office, tells City Paper that it ain't over till it's over. He says that provisional ballots still have yet to be counted — of which there could be dozens from Republican voters — meaning it's "possible" that the apparent winner won't win in the end.
The Commissioners hope to have an unofficial count of the provisional ballots done by tomorrow.
UPDATE: And even when it's over, it might not be over: Featherman told CP over the phone that once a winner is officially declared, it's a "possibility" that he'll go to court to challenge the results if the race comes down to fewer than 100 votes.
We haven't remotely had time to digest this yet, but a Pennsylvania Grand Jury just released a hundred-page, scathing report on the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
In its introduction, the report says (among other things) that the PGCB "failed to thoroughly protect the public from unlawful gaming practices," and "otherwise engaged in activities which eroded, at a minimum, this Grand Jury's confidence in the system."
You can get the report here (sorry, it's a Scribd site; we'll post the .pdf as soon as possible).
According to today's count by the City Commissioners, Kenyatta Johnson has beat Barbara Capozzi in the 2nd Council District race by just 46 votes — and it looks like Capozzi agrees with those results (for now, anyway).
Meanwhile, according to the Commissioners' office, the GOP mayoral race between Karen Brown and John Featherman still isn't over. With all the machine results in, Brown is currently up by 57 votes, but the office still has 180 alternative and absentee ballots to count.
They plan on counting those Wednesday.
After today's "unofficial" count of alternative and absentee ballots, the winner in the race for the next 2nd District Councilperson is still unclear.
Before the count, Kenyatta Johnson was beating Barbara Capozzi by 72 votes. According to the Committee of Seventy, today's count was 39 for Capozzi, 27 for Johnson, 17 no votes, 7 for Tracey Gordon, 6 for Damon Roberts — and 38 are anticipated to be challenged for various reasons.
Tomorrow, the Commissioners will count 93 provisional ballots from the 2nd.
Meanwhile, the race between GOP mayoral candidates Karen Brown and John Featherman is also still up in the air. The Commissioners are counting alternative and absentee ballots from around the city on Monday.
Judgement day may or may not come on Saturday.
Either way, the heathens among us will still have our cameras, as I understand it. Therefore, City Paper urges you, dear heathen readers, to photograph the whole shebang — and we'll make a special effort to put the best submission in next week's print edition — should circumstances allow us to put out another paper.
Yes, you heard right: We'tre aiming for a *special* doomsday episode of our awesome user-generated print photo column, "Photostream!"
To submit, either share your pics with CP via our flickr group or email them to photostream@citypaper.net.
Support is building in the state Senate for Rep. Matt Baker's very controversial House bill regulating abortion clinics. Baker says the bill would protect women against another Kermit Gosnell, the notorious abortion doctor charged with eight counts of murder — but pro-choice advocates argue that it's an anti-abortion bill in disguise that would only end up creating more Gosnells.
Baker's bill passed in the House last week, 148-43. But the question remains: Will it survive in the more moderate Senate? That chamber currently has another post-Gosnell bill in the works, written by Sen. Pat Vance, which is very different from Baker's — and which pro-choice advocates have called "way better" than Baker's piece of legislation.
At least one Senator has now made his support known for Baker's bill: Sen. Bob Mensch, of Bucks County, has introduced an amendment to Vance's bill that would, in short, make it a lot like Baker's legislation. (You can read the amendment here.) Both bills would hold abortion clinics to the same standards as outpatient surgical centers, which require that operating rooms be at least 400 square feet and a nurse always be on duty, among other things.
Pro-choice advocates say these regulations are unnecessary — and unnecessarily costly — and could lead to every clinic in thes state shutting down. In turn, women would turn to more illegal providers like Gosnell, these advocates say. Baker, however, says the regulations would save lives.
The Senate is expected to vote on Vance's bill — and Mensch's amendment — next week.
You can read background on Baker's bill here, and on Vance's here.
Yesterday, more than 60 percent of voters approved a ballot question that would create a 17-member jobs commission to study how to boost employment in the private sector.
The Committee of Seventy, a watchdog group, recommended that voters not approve it, arguing that it "would risk the creation of another potentially permanent and costly government 'commission' which is not necessary."
Translation: It could be a vehicle for patronage jobs, according to critics.
Seventy also points out that several government agencies tasked with job creation already exist, including the Commerce Department and the Office of Economic Opportunity.
But the commission's chief sponsor, Councilman Darrell L. Clarke, wrote in a letter that "Seventy's position is 100 percent wrong."
He argues that the jobs commission is necessary because, as of February, the unemployment rate "was a staggering 10.4 percent."
"The Commission will cast a wide net," Clarke says, "looking at job training, workforce development, economic development, education, licensing, zoning and taxation."
The members of the commission will be appointed by the mayor and City Council president. Not unrelatedly, Clarke is expected to run to become the next Council president against Councilwoman Marian Tasco.
One tax deadbeat, one non-lawyer, one man with long history of financial troubles, and another man who's said he might hit people while on the bench all won in yesterday's judicial races.
Sounds like a bad joke, eh?
Here are the deets:
Angelo Foglietta has owed thousands to the state and IRS, has had liens put on his home, and still owes debts resulting from a legal malpractice settlement, Metropolis reports. He says he's satisfied several of the debts, and paid down all of them.
Foglietta won in yesterday's race for Common Pleas judge. He's a Democrat, which means easy sailing in November's general election.
Christine Solomon, one of the many candidates for Traffic Court judge who is not a lawyer, won yesterday in the primary. (By law, you don't need to be.) She has the Democratic party's support. That means she'll almost certainly win in November, too.
Jim DiVergilis, City Paper readers know, has been in our paper quite a bit in past few weeks: First, because his campaign was providing police "courtesy cards" in exchange for donations. And then, because he said in a video that he's hit people before — and would have "no problem" continuing to so as a judge.
He won in yesterday's race for Common Pleas judge — but as a Republican. That means he's got a slim chance in November.
Lewis Harris, Jr. also won yesterday as a Republican, but for Traffic Court judge. CP found that he owes the city thousands in taxes, which Harris concedes to, but says he's contesting. Like DiVergilis, he's also got a small chance of winning in November.
Fewer than 24 hours have passed since polls cllosed in this year's primary election and — already! — a couple Independent and Green candidates have announced that they're throwing their hat in the ring for November's general election.
In the 3rd Council District: A mailer from Alicia Burbage turned up at a friend's doorstep yesterday. She's running as an Independent in the 3rd Council District race, but her campaign materials don't get much more specific than that. She was running against incumbent Jannie Blackwell this year as a Democrat, but got kicked off the ballot. Blackwell won yesterday with 98 percent of the vote (against Tony Dphax King, a nearly invisible candidate.)
Burbage's mailer does mention that she's worked with state Sen. Anthony Williams' office on constituent services for more than a decade. Her motto? "NO MORE OF THE SAME!" (Her caps.) Read more about her here.
In the 8th Council District: Last night, while I was gabbing about the election on G-Town Radio with host Ed Feldman and other esteemed guests, a man named Brian Rudnick called in. He announced that he's running as a write-in Green Party candidate in the 8th Council District race, in November's general election. Cindy Bass won in that district yesterday, with 39 percent of the vote.
In 2007, he also ran on the Green Party ticket, and got 4 percent of the vote in the general election — or, put another way, 1,126 votes — against incumbent Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller.
Rudnick criticizes the city's Democratic machine, which, he says, is responsible for "unreformed taxes on small business owners," DROP and "puff about being the greenest tree-filled city in the country yet unable to pick up the fall leaves," among other things. He also touts the fact that more than 1,000 people voted for him in 2007 "despite overwhelming odds against my being elected." Read more about him here.
In the at-large Council and/or mayoral race: And, of course, former Mayor John Street is continuing to ponder a run for an at-large Council seat — and possibly for mayor — reports Philly Clout.
- ActiVman
- adventures
- Arts
- Ask A Man-About-Town
- Award Tour
- Awards
- Bad Idea Factory
- Beer
- Below the Curve
- Bikes
- Booze
- Brian Hickey
- BRT
- Budget
- Budget Fuss
- Business
- Casinos
- City Council
- City Hall
- CouncilMANIC
- CP Abroad
- CP in the Community
- Criminal Justice System
- Day Tripper
- Death and Taxes
- Delaware River
- Design
- DROP
- Drugs
- Dubious Distinction
- Elections
- End of Days
- Environment
- Fashion
- Film Fest
- Financial Meltdown
- FrackTrack
- Free Library
- Gambling
- Gay Stuff
- Get Lit
- Greenstorming
- guns
- Hall Monitor
- Health
- Health Care
- Hello, Kitty
- Holidays
- Ice Cubes
- Iggles
- Immigration
- In Memoriam
- Labor
- Lawsuits
- Letters
- LGBTQ
- Maps
- Marcellus Shale
- Media
- MMA
- Mummers
- Music
- MUST READ
- Mysterious Mysteries
- Nation
- News
- Non Sequitur
- Opinion
- PA politics 2010
- Parking Wars
- Parks and Recreation
- People Send Us This Stuff
- Philadelphia Police
- Philadelphia Union
- Philaphemera
- Philly From Scratch
- philly madness
- Photos
- Poverty
- PPA
- President Obama
- Print Edition
- Prisons
- Protest
- Readers Write
- Real Estate
- Rock Bottom
- Schools
- Science
- Screwing Philly
- SEPTA
- snow
- So Lush
- Soccer
- Sporting Life
- Sports Complex
- State Politicians
- State Politics
- Street Art
- Strike
- Stuff We Like
- Taxes
- Taxi Drivers
- Tech Fetish
- television
- The Budget Crisis
- The City Paper
- The CLOG
- The Human Condition
- The Mayor
- The Phightin Phils
- The World
- Things that make you go hm
- Tinfoil Hats Off
- Under the Table
- Under the Tables
- Urban Development
- Urban Planning
- urban wildlife
- Video Poker
- We Call Shenanigans
- Weather
- Web Junk
- Weekend Omnibus
- White House
- What We've Found
- Women's Issues
- Flyered Up!
- How 'Bout That Weather?
- it's always sunny in philadelphia
- Stu!
- Shopping
- get out
- 10-track mind
- ArtsFlash
- Bloggity
- Bruce Being Bruce
- Colleges
- Comedy
- Gigantic Surprises
- Hello Canary
- Hello Puppy
- errata
- get lost
- Inside The Fishbowl
- Library Closings
- Local Support
- Movies
- Murder
- Night Moves
- Recycling
- radio
- Scientology
- Sex
- Sixers
- Skeeze Police
- State Politicians Screwing Philly
- That's a cool stencil!
- Theater
- Things We See
- This Week
- This Week in Oates
- University City
- WIN
- What we don't heart
- trailer!
- what we heart
- Feeling Guilty
- Askadelphia.
- Broke in Philly
- Contest
- Dance
- Dear Paper Doll
- Do A Good Thing
- Education
- Film Fest Schism
- G20-20 Vision
- Goodbye
- Gossip
- Great American Heroes
- PATCO
- Pearl Jam Week
- Puppy
- Stars of the Photostream
- sustainability
- Lower Merion Webcam-Gate
- The Cycle
- Equality Forum
- Bureaucrat of the Week
- Animals
- ElectionEar
- Photostream
