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Today's City Paper includes an in-depth look at how Comcast flexes its political muscle at all levels of government, from City Council to Pennsylvania’s General Assembly to the U.S. Congress.
The company declined interview requests and asked CP to submit written questions, which we did last week. On Monday, we were still waiting, and so I called Comcast corporate communications executive director John Demming to check in — would they be responding to the questions they asked me to send them?
"I don't think so," Demming told me. Then why did you ask me to submit written questions? "Yeah, but I don't think we're going to be able to. We wanted to see what your story was about. We just, there's no need to reply. We don't have a comment. I just don't think, we're just not going, we don't have a response to them. I don't know if ... I don't know what to say."
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The Philadelphia Police Department has failed to rein in stops-and-frisks without reasonable suspicion as required by a 2011 consent decree, according to a report filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union and civil-rights law firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg in federal court.
“This report tells us that the city has not achieved the goal of ensuring that its stop-and-frisk practices are legal and fair,” said lawyer David Rudovsky in a statement. “The PPD will need to improve its own monitoring and supervision systems to meet that goal, or the court will be asked to impose appropriate sanctions.”
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That city and state politicians make poor and sometimes illegal choices with your tax dollars is not at all new but it is inarguably newsworthy.
Earlier this month in City Council, Councilwoman Marian Tasco complimented my "excellent rebuttal to Philadelphia Magazine's latest and continued assault on Black Philadelphia," the rightfully maligned "Being White in Philly." But Tasco's compliment was a prelude to her characterization of the Inquirer's reporting about a prominent black politician's alleged wrongdoing as racist.
The Inquirer obtained two leaked state Office of the Inspector General reports on alleged financial malfeasance committed by two nonprofits closely tied to onetime House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Dwight Evans: the Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corp. (OARC) and the Urban Affairs Coalition (UAC).
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Labor activists are delivering a "petition to City Council urging council members to stand with Philadelphia’s working families, not corporate lobbyists" ahead of tomorrow's vote on legislation that would require many employers to offer employees paid sick leave.
Activists have recently focused their campaign on Comcast, which spent $108,429.25 lobbying Council on paid sick leave in 2012, according to Philadelphia's Media Mobilizing Project.
The petition is signed by 60,000 people, including 14,000 who identified themselves as Comcast customers.
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Philadelphia Magazine just published an article by Robert Huber titled "Being white in Philly: In a city that is largely poor and segregated white people have become afraid to say anything at all about race. Here's what's not being said."
No, it is not an Onion-esque parody of Philadelphia's most white-bread journalistic institution, a magazine that seemingly hired Gene Marks just because he wrote the jaw-droppingly offensive article “If I Were a Poor Black Kid” for Forbes.
But before I continue, I must first disable the story's booby trap, a defense built into its very DNA: the idea that "in so many quarters, simply discussing race is seen as racist."
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Political operative John D. McDaniel's ongoing Philadelphia Board of Ethics saga has centered on Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown's troubling campaign finance practices and wasteful political patronage in the Nutter administration. McDaniel had been Brown's campaign manager, held apparently sole control over a political action committee and held a well-paying job at the airport provided by the mayor himself. Now there's a new twist: McDaniel's Progressive Agenda PAC also funneled $5,900 from Students First PAC, a Pennsylvania group backed by Bala Cynwyd hedge fund managers and wealthy national school voucher advocates, to state House candidate Fatimah Muhammad's 2012 campaign, which was heavily supported by voucher proponents.
McDaniel's transfer of funds, detailed in an Ethics Board settlement released on Monday, was a violation of Philadelphia's Home Rule Charter. But Students First PAC (not to be confused with the ideologically related Michelle Rhee group StudentsFirst) may have also violated state campaign finance law.
"You may not direct another person to give money on your behalf," says Barry Kauffman, director of watchdog Pennsylvania Common Cause. Kauffman points to Section 1634(a) of the state election code, which states that it is "unlawful for any person to make any contribution with funds designated or given to him for the purpose by any other person, firm or corporation. Each person making a contribution shall do so only in his own name."
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John Baer dedicated today's Daily News state politics column to praising Kahlil Byrd, the president of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst education reform group and past CEO of something you've never heard of called Americans Elect. (A copy editor apparently missed that "StudentsFirst" does not, contrary to English grammar norms, put a space between what appear to be two words)
As Baer notes, Byrd markets himself to Daily News readers as a master of "disruptive politics" — of an independent, nonpartisan variety. But, as I reported at Salon last year, the vast majority of candidates that the pro-charter and union-busting outfit supports are, surprise, Republicans. StudentsFirst's donors include Mayor Michael Bloomberg, hedge fund managers, and the Walton Family Foundation. In Pennsylvania, StudentsFirst hired Ashley DeMauro, former Department of Education government relations chief under Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.
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The 2010 video went viral on Youtube quickly: Philadelphia Police Officer Jimmy Leocal beating Askia Sabur repeatedly on West Philadelphia's Lansdowne Avenue. In the video, Leocal then pulls his gun on the alarmed crowd.
The beating sparked an uproar, local and national media coverage, and was discussed during City Council hearings on police brutality. But busy reporters moved on, and Sabur spent the last two years in jail awaiting trial for the charge of assaulting Leocal's partner, Officer Donyul Williams.
Today, a jury found Sabur not guilty of aggravated assault, disarming a law enforcement officer, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and resisting arrest.
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The William Penn Foundation has suspended grant-making to city-related agencies after public education advocates filed a complaint charging that the $2 billion philanthropy violated Philadelphia's new lobbying code when it funded and directed millions of outside dollars to pay the Boston Consulting Group to develop a controversial restructuring plan for the School District of Philadelphia.
"A citizen complaint was recently filed with the Philadelphia Board of Ethics alleging that certain grantmaking activities of the Foundation are regulated by the City’s lobbying registration and reporting ordinance," according to an email from Interim President Helen Davis Picher. "The Foundation wants to ensure our full compliance with the ordinance and is awaiting further clarification with regard to its scope concerning permissible grant activity."
The city says that it received a letter announcing the decision in reference to a grant application seeking funding for Bartram's Mile, a proposed 1.1-mile trail extension linking the east and west sides of the Schuylkill River.
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The Newspaper Guild has reached a tentative two-year contract with Interstate General Media.
The union representing newsroom employees opened their contract early after the newish owners of The Inquirer and Daily News reportedly threatened to liquidate the papers in a week's time. The Guild then protested that the owners were demanding a new performance review to weaken seniority--and potentially push out older reporters.
The proposed contract, according to the Guild e-mail below, includes a performance review with strong worker protections, and guarantees that both papers will be printed as dailies for the duration of the contract. That last point indicates that the owners are considering moving to a few-times-a-week print schedule, a model that has now been implemented at papers like The New Orleans Times-Picayune.
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