|
|
|
Archive: May, 2012
On Monday, busloads of people from Philadelphia and from towns and cities throughout the Commonwealth descended on Harrisburg to take part in two separate protests against the policies of Gov. Tom Corbett and Republican legislators: for immigrant rights and against the complete elimination of cash welfare assistance.
Corbett is not a big fan of protests: police once again took the (previously) unprecedented step of closing off access to the Capitol Rotunda to some demonstrators. Earlier this year, they allegedly singled out people in wheelchairs protesting cuts to disability services and barred them taking the elevator to the governor's office.
Protest one: Juntos and other immigrant rights groups demonstrated against anti-immigrant legislation, much of it introduced by the very, very right-wing state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler), who City Paper described in a July 2011 profile as the “the gun-toting, gay-bashing, tea-partying state rep who's taking over Harrisburg.”
Proposals include denying undocumented immigrants public benefits, and, in a copycat of Arizona's controversial law, requiring local police to enforce federal immigration laws. One Metcalfe bill would require employers to use the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify database to check workers' Social Security numbers―an interesting call for the expansion of federal power coming from a politician with long-standing associations with the paranoid Obama-is-planning-on-rounding-up-dissidents-into-FEMA camps militiaman fringe right-wing.
In a long, contentious Council committee hearing last week, Council President Darrell Clarke looked somewhat baffled by the fact — and fact it was — that no small number of his constituents from the 5th Councilmanic District had showed up to stage a rebellion against him.
Clarke has been working for months on a bill that would create a Neighborhood Improvement District (NID) in the Temple area. It would impose an assessment (like a tax) on non-homeowner-occupied residential buildings, aimed at investors and owners who cater to the growing local student population.
What seemed to surprise Clarke was how many home-owning residents seemed to oppose it. After all, they wouldn't pay the tax. Instead, it would be paid by the very developers whom residents accused of irresponsible development and disrespectful practices — to the benefit, in theory, of longtime residents.
Clarke has characterized much of the opposition as a matter of a lack of "education" on the law. But it's more complicated than that.
Say you wanted to find out information about a scheduled sheriff's sale — say, the one held Wednesday.Where would you look?
Not, we hope, on the "Internet."
Should you attempt it, you might be fooled into clicking a link titled "Sheriff's Sale Schedule" on www.phillysheriff.com — on which the most recent sheriff's sale listed is five months old, and which contains exactly zilch (0) when it comes to information on upcoming sales, including Wednesday's.
Michael and Matt Pestronk, the owners of the development company Post Brothers, have been squaring off against Philly's powerful unions for the past several months -- and things have escalated to the point that they sought and received a temporary injunction against union protesters a few weeks ago. Tomorrow, they have a hearing to make that injunction permanent, following what they say have been weeks of intimidation, threats, violence, vandalism and personal attacks both near the work sites and at their places of residence. Deliveries were blocked from the site of Post's Goldtex construction project at 12th and Callowhill, as well as from a second site, the rehab of two residential towers known as Rittenhouse Hill in Germantown.
Union conflicts aren't uncommon in Philly, but now the developers are saying that L&I has wandered right into the middle of it. L&I reportedly issued a stop-order on work at the site yesterday, for reasons that the developer says don't match typical protocol. Post was told the order was issued because copies of all subcontractors' business licenses were not immediately available; but L&I officials later told Post that's not an appropriate reason to issue a stop-work order. The timing seems suspicious to the developers, but mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald said the L&I investigation was part of a routine spot-checking system to ensure all licenses are in place. At the site, the inspector found that multiple subcontractors had neither contractor's licenses (which ensures the city that proper insurance/bonding is in place) nor business priviledge licenses. He said provided that everything else is in place, subcontractors could probably get back to work in short order.
The back-story here: Post closed on Goldtex in 2010 and, as its own general contractor, bid out the work on the site, awarding contracts to 40 percent union shops and 40 percent non-union subcontractors. The unions, says Michael Pestronk, told the company it was all-or-nothing. "The union official told me it had to be a union job, or they would do everything in their power to stop the job." Work went ahead, with workers Pestronk says are skilled and licensed, and paid above prevailing wages. The unions, meanwhile began a months-long picketing effort about a year ago, including fliers with slurs about Matt Pestronk's wife, signs reading "shame on Post Brothers" at high-traffic corners far from the site, and picketers at Goldtex and Rittenhouse Hill, which just closed on $52 million in private investments.
The injunction -- which Post must pay $2,000 per day to the Sheriff's Office to enforce -- has tamed things a bit, though Pestronk says he has video footage of violent attacks on workers at the site, as well as vandalism such as pouring a 10-gallon drum of oil on the site. Calls to the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council and the Philadelphia local of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners went unreturned this morning.
The Mayor's Actual Value Initiative, a decade-overdue updating of property tax assessments, might just be the issue that tests Council President Darrell Clarke's ability to whip Council into consensus, especially since it's combined with a request for $90 million-plus in additional funding for Philadelphia School District. After all, rookie Councilman Mark Squilla has introduced a bill trying to delay AVI for a year; Councilwomen Blondell Reynolds Brown and Maria Quinones-Sanchez came out in support of AVI in a DN opinion piece; and Councilman Bill Green and and Councilman Curtis Jones got into a heated debate today at council over whether, in fact, "manning up" for Philly students and supporting AVI are one and the same.
Green complained that the "administration's proposal could shift hundreds of millions in taxes away from businesses to homeowners," and that proposed fixes like a "homestead exemption" for owner-occupied homes are far from certain to materialize or to help if they do. "They tell us that [proceeding with AVI with out a millage rate] is legal, even though case law requires a millage rate be set." And if savings programs don't go into effect, he says, the city could over-collect by $1.5 billion.
Besides, all this working out depends on everything going smoothly with the calculations, an unlikely proposition, he said, because of ongoing Office of Technology delays. "There are a lot of variables and uncertainties and everything will have to go exactly right and on schedule. That has not been my experience in government the last four years. That has not been my experience with this administration."
A couple weeks ago, Community College of Philadelphia President Stephen M. Curtis got up in front of a national conference of his peers and proudly told them, "My own college behaves much more like a private college these days than a public." What does that privatization mean, exactly? Turns out that the college, whose $120 million 2010-'11 operating budget ballooned 83 percent in the last 13 years, is expected to get two-thirds of its revenue from tuition next year as state and city contributions shrink. Also, like private colleges with their deep-pocketed individual donors, CCP has begun its own fundraising efforts, recently wrapping up a $10 million donation push. And finally, Curtis told the conference, he wants to outsource stuff like cleaning services and child care.
Those might sound, to the trained ear, like fighting words, given that cleaning services — along with building maintenance, computer repair and full-time and part-time faculty — are among the 1,300 unionized CCP employees currently locked in a stalemate with the college over contract negotiations. The American Federation of Teachers Local 2026 has been pushing back on the college's "best and final offer" of a 10.5 percent raise over five years, contingent on state and city funding remaining within 2 percent of what it is now; unless Gov. Corbett has an uncharacteristic fit of generosity, the raise is more likely to be 1.5 percent, says union co-president John Braxton. "The contract they want us to sign has huge increases in medical costs, that would more than outweigh the 1.5 percent pay increase. It guarantees our medical costs would go up, but makes no guarantee we would be able to pay for them."
The union is looking at some creative ways to push back, among them refusing to cooperate with the Middle States Accreditation process, a once-in-10-years review that is critical to maintaining the college's standing, Braxton says. He says the union already successfully deterred Sen. Bob Casey from coming to speak at the college after a leafleting campaign began.
It's no surprise that providing “material support” to a terrorist group is against the law. But a 2010 Supreme Court decision, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, concluded it’s not just illegal to ship grenades or suitcases of cash. “Advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” is also a felony.
Why, then, nearly two months after it was revealed that the Treasury Department is investigating former Gov. Ed Rendell for receiving money from a terrorist group to undertake just that sort of advocacy, has he not been indicted by the Department of Justice?
In recent years, Rendell had delivered speeches in support of Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian Marxist-Islamist group that resides in an Iraqi desert base and that the U.S. designated a terrorist organization for killing Americans during the 1970s.
One 10-minute speech earned Rendell $20,000, and he frequently flew to Europe to call for MEK’s removal from the terror list. That would appear to fall within the extraordinarily broad definition of “material support” used by the Obama administration.
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
VERY Empty Lot of the Week
240 Market St. — Wow, this empty lot is completely useless ... it's not even a parking lot! Situated on a fine part of Market Street, this lot hasn't seen a building in 25 years. It doesn't get much worse than this ... a perfectly good piece of land just sitting there collecting party puke and bumshit.
Believe it or not, this shitty little pile of dirt is actually an historical site. This plot once held the Indian King Tavern, a famous inn where Benjamin Franklin would meet with his Junto, a group of the smartest motherfuckers he could find. The Indian King would later become the one of the city's earliest Masonic lodges. Is that historic enough for you? NO? OK asshole, the Indian King also holds the distinction of being the first bar on Market Street, back when Market Street was called High Street. Is that enough?
The Indian King was so famous that after it was torn down in 1731, the sign that stood over the door was on display inside the building that replaced it as late as 1806. Things get historically cloudy about the lot between then and 1858, since the address numbers changed over that time. At some point in that range of dates, a massive five-story commercial building was constructed that would stand for the next century and a half. The first records of it call it the J.C. Howe Dry Goods warehouse.
- 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
