Vacation blogging

Light blogging. The kiddo's off school for the week, money's too tight to go out of town, and we're re-arranging furniture.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, -- note, this week we're downstairs again -- where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!

José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

This week's topic: Is it New Year's Day yet?



"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Real Christmas spirit from the Kinks

In recognition of Christmas, my continued underemployment, and the Senate's ratification of the START treaty, video from a Kinks performance for West German television:



Give my daddy a job 'cause he needs one
He's got lots of mouths to feed --
But if you've got one I'll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street

Friday jukebox: your annual Judy Garland fix

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, -- note, this week we're downstairs -- where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!

José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

This week's topic: Another year, another round of buying gifts for friends and family who already have everything they need and the disposable income to get just about anything else they want. Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet?

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

The reports of the death of the American streetcar are greatly exagerrated

CNN article about the pros and cons of streetcars begs a huge question in its headline ("Can streetcars save America's cities?" assumes that America's cities are all dying or in decline), and omits any mention of Philadelphia, where multiple trolley lines began operating in the 1890s, and where the system has been running its subway-surface lines continuously since the tunnel between City Hall and West Philadelphia was completed in 1906. The Victorian rowhouses that comprise much of West Philly were constructed in this era, when the neighborhoods were built up as some of the first "bedroom communities" in the U.S. Now they're federally recognized as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District.

Dig an interesting annotated history of the 34 trolley at the website of Studio 34, a yoga and wellness center on the Baltimore Avenue line.

Of course, many of Philadelphia's streetcars have been replaced by buses since the olden days -- the #23 bus is a huge example: though its rails are still in the pavement and its catenary wire is still overhead, the trolley route was was changed to bus service in 1992. But then again, SEPTA put "heritage" streetcars back on Girard Avenue's route 15 in 2005, after they'd given it the Route 23 treatment.

Philadelphia's subway-surface lines provide one of the easiest, quickest routes to get from Center City to multiple points in West Philadelphia: the hospitals (CHOP, UPenn, the VA, Presbyterian, and Penn's veterinary hospital), movie houses, Penn/Drexel/USciences, Clark Park, and any number of interesting restaurants, cafés, and gastropubs. Go a little farther out and you can get to Bartram's Garden; a few historic cemeteries; drug territories patrolled by thugs on ATVs; and Darby, birthplace of W.C. Fields. And that's not even mentioning the interurban lines: the 101 and 102 trolleys serving the towns of Media and Sharon Hill, and the 100 light rail serving Norristown. These vehicles carry tens of thousands of people around southeastern Pennsylvania daily (PDF). While a lot of Philadelphia's streetcar service was replaced long ago by diesel and now hybrid-diesel buses, I think it's a significant omission to leave out Philly's heavily used trolleys in a national news article about streetcars.

Kenz serial killer's latest victim was on the street because she had no health insurance

From today's Daily News, regarding the Kensington serial killer's latest victim, Casey Mahoney, focuses on how it's "eerie" that Mahoney (like everybody else on social networking websites) filled out a quiz recently that asked, among other things, how she'd prefer to die. But there's another, far more important and "eerie" fact buried in the article:

Mahoney graduated from high school in North Carolina, according to her MySpace page, and previously lived in New York City. She first came to Philadelphia to attend a drug-rehab clinic, Mahoney's mother-in-law told CBS3 yesterday, but she was forced to leave because of a lack of insurance. She went home to enter another clinic, but left after just a week and returned to Philadelphia this week[.]

Mahoney leaves behind a toddler. If drug-control enforcement money were focused on the right things -- treatment, vocational rehabilitation, and work placement, as well as investigating and prosecuting reported sex crimes and violence on the Ave, rather than serially arresting and imprisoning the women -- then Mahoney's toddler might still have a mom today.

In another article, a 30-year-old local man is quoted, addressing the police theory that the strangler is a customer who contracted HIV from a prostitute and is exacting revenge:

He got burnt. Do you know what that means? It means he was with a hooker and she gave him a disease. [ ... ] He's going after as many white hookers as he can. Put yourself in his shoes, do you blame him?

How many other residents have this attitude? How many cops?

Capital One's "terroristic debt collection" lawsuit

Pennsylvania civil procedure requires fact pleading, which is more detailed than the minimal notice pleading you need for most federal civil cases. So here's what you get when you pit a Philadelphia lawyer versus Capital One credit cards in a lawsuit for violation of various provisions of the Pennsylvania Fair Credit Extension Uniformity Act (73 P.S. § 2270.1 et seq.) and Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (73 P.S. §§ 201-1 – 201-9.2):

26. Apparently believing that Plaintiff, her then-counsel and debt collection in general to be some sort of fanciful and humorous endeavor, Defendant sent its next letter dated August 25, 2009, giving Plaintiff the shock of her life.

27. Defendant's letter dated August 25, 2009 indicated a balance and demanded payment of TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY-SIX MILLION, SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN DOLLARS ($286,651,237.00) on the Capital One account ending in 3345!! A true and correct copy of the August 25, 2009 letter is attached hereto as Exhibit "F".

[ ... ]

34. Capital One's advertising slogan "what's in your wallet?" is promoted across the media, including television, radio and internet, [trumpeting] the value of its product.

35. Capital One apparently wanted to know not only [what] was in Plaintiff's wallet, but intended to empty her wallet as well.

36. Capital One never placed $286,651,237.00 in Plaintiff's wallet, pocketbook or, bank account.

(PDF, and all emphasis as in original.) Plaintiff apparently was, indeed, behind in her credit card payments. So Capital One sued -- for that $286 million -- but then never showed up to court. Her attorney calls it "terroristic debt collection," and I hope they get punitive damages, too.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!

José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

This week's topic: Julian Assange's OkCupid profile.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Fattah will vote to continue the Bush tax cuts for billionaires

Chaka Fattah, R-Pa., believes in trickle-down fairies and will be voting for the tax breaks for billionaires (fattah.house.gov).

My law firm is not seeking interns

A few days ago I got e-mail from someone who'd found my profile on a dating site I used to frequent. My profile indicates that I'm a second-career attorney currently building a two-person practice here in Philadelphia. This guy stumbled across my profile, said he was thinking of going to law school, and (1) wanted to hear my opinion about it, and (2) wondered if my firm was interested in taking on an intern.

I told him not to go to law school, for a lot of reasons, many if not all of which Above the Law touched upon a couple of days later in their discussion about the University of Delaware's preliminary plans for starting up a new law school down there in Newark. But before I answered the internship question, I looked at the guy's profile. In it, he indicated that he is currently in law school. I switched back to the message window and clicked "send" without addressing the question about an internship, and here's why.

1 - My firm is not looking for an intern, paid or otherwise.

2 - Even if my firm were looking for an intern, I wouldn't hire a candidate who approached me via a dating website rather than a networking website.

3 - Even if my firm were looking for an intern that we were willing to hire based on an inquiry via a dating website, we wouldn't hire someone who says in e-mail that he's considering going to law school, but who says in his profile that he is currently a law student. Though I bet checking his references would be good for a few giggles.

Hate crime numbers are down in Mississippi . . .

. . . when the figures are voluntarily self-reported by law enforcement (WLBT-TV). The ACLU says they'd like to see the state legislature require hate crime identification training as well as mandatory data gathering and reporting. As it is, ACLU and a professor at the nearby law school figure the police are categorizing hate crimes as merely assaults and property crimes.

Jeff Deeney takes a colleague and a camera to the Ave

While the Philly P.D. have been twiddling their thumbs about women in Kensington getting picked off for months by a serial killer, and while other journalists in the city get their stories from police news conferences and data they can gather over the Internet, Jeff Deeney took a Newsweek Daily Beast colleague with a video camera over to the Ave to talk to the actual people who live and work around there. See the results: a woman talks about how the police don't act on reports of rape when the complainant is a drug-sick prostitute; a former addict gives a sightseeing tour of an area where people go to shoot up or die; and a mother of two describes fear and loathing under the El.

Somebody's "criminally negligent," but it ain't the parents

The Raw Story is having a field day with the unfortunate choice of words by conservative editor and pundit Kate O'Beirne of the National Review, who says,

My question is what poor excuse for a parent can't rustle up a bowl of cereal and a banana? I just don't get why millions of school children qualify for school breakfasts unless we have a major wide spread problem with child neglect. If that's how many parents are incapable of pulling together a bowl of cereal and a banana, then we have problems that are way bigger than -- that problem can't be solved with a school breakfast, because we have parents who are just [...] criminally negligent with respect to raising children.

O'Beirne is referring to the USDA's school breakfast program, which reimburses schools in cash for serving breakfasts to kids in need. Kids can get a free or reduced-price breakfast depending on where their family's income level lies on the federally-defined poverty scale. In fiscal 2009, of the 11.1 million kids who participated in the federal school breakfast program every day, 9.1 million got their breakfast for free or for a reduced price. The program cost $2.9 billion in 2009 (PDF).

By contrast, in 2009, the Department of Defense spent about $4.4 billion per month on the war in Afghanistan (PDF).

My point, and I do have one, is two-fold. One, obviously, reimbursing a school to the tune of $1.50 per hot breakfast served is not a very large expense. A program that costs, on a yearly basis, less than the cost of waging war for three weeks is not something the elimination of which will do much to reduce the federal deficit. And of course it's penny-wise, pound-foolish to make nutrition even harder to obtain for kids who are at-risk socioeconomically and academically in the first place, when it's well known that the better a kid eats, the better she'll do in school (click to page 2). So advocating for the end of federally funded free and reduced-fee lunches is just stupid on two levels: the savings wouldn't amount to anything significant, and it would create further academic and disciplinary problems among disadvantaged kids and the teachers and the other students around them.

My second point, though, is that, um, to tell the truth, I don't 100% disagree with O'Beirne's point -- very, very badly expressed -- that parents should give their kids breakfast, and it's not that hard. Now, I don't think it's "criminal" or "negligent." Rather, I think it's a lack of good old-fashioned home economics education. Because you know what, a breakfast of oatmeal and a banana is cheap and nutritious. Bananas are regularly 69 cents a pound and a paperboard canister of generic old-fashioned oats can be had for about $4.00. I don't mean a box of packets of pre-sweetened, flavored, instant oats; or a tin can of imported Irish oats; or a sack of organic, gluten-free, hippie-friendly oats; or paper cups of express-instant oatmeal. I mean a paperboard can of store-brand, non-instant, old-fashioned oats.

So if bananas are 69 cents per pound, and one banana weighs about a quarter pound; and if you use 1/2 cup of oatmeal from a $4.00 canister that holds about 7 cups of oatmeal; then you have a breakfast that costs about 18 cents plus 29 cents, or less than 50 cents per kid. Plus the cost of water and cooking energy, which is not completely negligible, but which adds at most a nickel to the calculus.

It's not the world's best breakfast. A growing kid wants and needs more than a half-cup (before cooking) of oatmeal and a single banana; most kids need some protein, like milk or yogurt or an egg or something, or else they'll get hungry long before lunchtime. But if you don't have much money, this is a cheap way to get calories and nutrition into a kid in the morning.

A destitute household may not have a microwave oven. But very, very few households are so desperate that they have no stove, whether gas or electric, or no electric at all for a crockpot (you can get a new one for $15) or a plug-in electric kettle (they start at about $15). I'm not saying that households that desperate don't exist in the U.S.; I'm saying that this kind of household needs more than a blog post on home economics.

And, no, I don't live in a blasted-out neighborhood in North Philadelphia, or an out-of-the-way hamlet in Appalachia with no jobs, tax base, or public services. We have heat in the winter and A/C in the summer; my daughter has her own room and her own bed; and I have the education and the skills to fill my pantry with cheap, nutritious foods acquired in bulk when they go on sale. I have a reliable safety net with my friends and family, and my ex-husband hasn't missed a support payment yet. So I can be accused of having a huge blind spot to the realities of feeding the kids when there is zero, and I mean zero, money in the house, and it's another week before the assistance check arrives. But I hope I'm not in the same place as the law professor who told me, when I was passed over for summer funding for a public-interest internship, that she knew where I was coming from because, she explained, she had briefly been a social worker in New York City. (I confess I lost my temper and asked her less than tactfully if she would like to tell my daughter that we'd be having spaghetti again for dinner that night, and probably for the rest of the summer as well.)

But in the end, calling parents "criminally negligent" doesn't help the debate. Ad hominem attacks deflect from the real point, which I presume -- but can't be sure because her comment was so stupid and inflammatory -- for O'Beirne was federal fiscal responsibility. And I want to stand by my real point that you can feed your family cheaply and nutritiously, if you educate yourself, avoid convenience and junk foods, and equip your kitchen with some basic tools. But when rich people call poor people "criminally negligent," people like The Raw Story get their panties in a twist about the wrong problem. It isn't rich people hating poor people. That is a problem, but it's not going to go away when websites fan the class-war flames by posting unflattering photos and quotes from Rush Limbaugh. The important problem is that statistic up there, which is, holy crap, over 11 million children in the U.S. use the school breakfast program. That is more than 1 in 10 American kids (Census.gov). And let me tell you, that's not just "urban" kids or immigrant "anchor babies."

You know what, I'll bite anyway. Kate O'Beirne, on what insane planet do you live where it is "criminally negligent" to make sure your children get fed? When your fridge is empty, when it takes two buses and a trolley to get to a decent supermarket, when your child's father hasn't made a support payment in years, and when it's another ten days to your loan disbursement or your paycheck or your TANF or SSI check, how do you feed your kids? If you're smart and lucky like me, your kid gets spaghetti for dinner every day for half a month, because I stocked up last time the generic spaghetti went on super discount, and I live in a home where I got the big cabinet in the marital property split and I don't have to worry about break-ins. But if I'd sent my daughter to get free breakfast from the city that summer, that would have made me a "criminally negligent" parent? What an abhorrent opinion. It's another case of poor people being damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Anyway, the rich people kind of got what they wanted. According to the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 pays for expanded access to the USDA breakfast program by cutting food stamp benefits by $59 per month. That's a lot of oatmeal and bananas.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at José Pistola's upstairs bar, where there are drink specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. And the more we tip the bartender, the more frequently he hands out free dishes of chips and dips. I hope to see you there!

José Pistola's is at 263 South 15th Street (15th and Spruce) in Center City, near the Kimmel Center and the Academy of Music. There's a parking garage across the street, but as filthy liberal hippies naturally we suggest public transit; both SEPTA and PATCO will get you there in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

This week's topic: Three murders and three non-fatal sexual assaults means we've got a serial killer here in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Be safe out there!

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

Honestly, I can't care about the tax cut debate

Blah, blah, blah, Bush tax cuts for millionaires, blah blah.

I'm still severely underemployed and my dad keeps sending me want ads for opening-level secretarial jobs in the Delaware courts. By which I mean to say, I would care about tax cuts if it looked as though I'd have any taxable income by the end of the year!

So go ahead, Congress. Keep the millionaire's tax cuts, continue repeating trickle-down nonsense, reinstate the jobless benefits extension, blow the deficit to incomprehensible proportions, and starve the middle class until there's no middle class left. Maybe we need Hoovervilles again. But I can't care any more.

Kensington Strangler still not found

Jeff Deeney was on the radio yesterday discussing the still active serial woman-killer in Kensington. After at least 4 recent strangulations -- 2 fatal -- there has not yet been an arrest. A couple of weeks ago, Jeff summarized the reason why:

The city of Philadelphia’s moralistic approach to prostitution that essentially condones sexual violence as a reasonable outcome for a fallen woman to suffer is total fucking bullshit. Better approaches to dealing with prostitution shouldn’t require a serial killer bringing a national spotlight on it in order to have real action after years of status quo.