Uncategorized – Page 31

The diary of a mad, black, super delegate

Americans. Who the hell knows what a super delegate is? Even if you do, you don’t really. Primary season can be about as labyrinthine as.. well, as every other element to the broken, patchwork voting system that elects leaders in the most powerful country in the world.

Thing is, they could end up being awfully important, if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to run tightly through to this summer’s Democratic Convention – which almost all are concluding they will. See, if the primary season doesn’t choose a presumptive candidate, then the Party’s 796 super delegates decide for them, as was displayed in an interesting report by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Larry Eichel. No surprise, Philadelphia’s representatives in this game are voices of the city’s Democratic machine, notably Carol Ann Campbell, the city party’s secretary, former councilwoman, and resident caricature.

Campbell has said she isn’t saying who she supports yet, as the Inquirer’s Heard in the Halls blog reported. Another noted machine rep who is a super delegate is Ron Donatucci, a Temple University alumus and trustee, the city’s register of wills and has also served as the city commitee’s secretary. The city’s other superdelegates are senior elected officials, like U.S. Reps. Chaka Fattah, Bob Brady and Allyson Schwartz, Sen. Casey and Gov. Rendell. (Photo courtesy of City Paper, from an article that is referenced in this post)

My son was riding this Chinese bus

Good find on Philadelphia Weekly’s Will Do blog.

Chris Matthews, a Philly kid and MSNBC talking head, tried to talk about the Chinatown bus, and how his son took it to get home and vote. ‘Cept he kept calling it the Chinese bus, not that getting it right and calling it the Chinatown bus woulda helped most of the country know what the hell he was talking about.

So, yeah, though Matthews totally goes to bat for Philly on the reg, it’s fairly amusing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tVkLiYGlNo]

Arrest that jaywalker

New Philadelphia Police Commissioner Chuck Ramsey unveiled his comprehensive crime fighting report early this month. Lots was made of initiatives to pump in new cops and lessen homicide totals with direct action, but a smaller plan is in the works.

An old suggestion by city cop Edward McLaughlin for Philadelphia to conform with most of Pennsylvania in a small and sensible way caught the attention of Ramsey and was included in his plan, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer today.Throughout most of the state, such quality of life offenses like littering, jaywalking and acting as a public nuisance require an officer just to write a citation, permitted the transgressor has proof of address. Since 1974, Philadelphia officers have had to arrest the person, and spend an hour or more bringing the individual to be booked and processed.

Don’t be too hopeful though. The change could take at least six months and could require a massive overhaul in processing, as there is the expectation for a huge upsurge in citations. We’ll see if Ramsey can fight Philly, where good ideas come to die.

Political ad of the century?

The embattled, corrupt, figurehead of the contemporary South Philadelphia Democratic machine, Vince Fumo, is running his reelection campaign for state senator, amid questions of his having to sell his Fairmount mansion – built more than ten years ago – to pay legal fees in defense of the usual sort of allegations of malfeasance. But, boy does he have an advertisement for you.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW4DQjlZ6O8&eurl=http://cfpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/mommy-why-is-vince-fumo-in-our-kitchen.html]

Philly Mayor to be featured on ABC's 'World News'

Tomorrow, new Mayor Michael Nutter will be interviewed by ABC’s Charles Gibson, host of the network’s signature news broadcast, World News Tonight.

ABC will also follow Nutter to film a day in the life segment. Gibson will host World News from Old City tomorrow night, as well.

The feature comes as Nutter comes into one power of one of the largest cities in the country, determined to take on urban problems with big plans.

World News broadcasts at 6:30 p.m. on ABC 6.

Andrew Brock: Getting out of his father's shadow

Interview and article prepared for the Philadelphia Business Journal, as filed last week, without edits, to run in last Friday’s edition.

Andrew J. Brock is finally the boss.

In December, Brock, 40, officially became president and CEO of Brock and Company Inc., a catering business based in Malvern. His promotion marks the conclusion of the 45-year tenure of man he has known his entire life his father, Lynmar Brock, Jr.

“The company has prospered for 81 years, and I’d like to see it prosper into the future,” Andrew said. “The responsibility is falling onto my shoulders.”

Brock and Company was launched in 1927 in Swarthmore by then-22-year-old Lynmar Brock Sr., Andrew’s grandfather.

He made boxed lunches in his mother’s kitchen to distribute to factories in the region. At his peak, Lynmar Sr. was sending lunches to hundreds of locations, delivered by more than 60 trucks. Because of a bout Lynmar Sr. had with Alzheimer’s, a then-28-year-old Lynmar Jr. was forced to take over the family business, losing his father in 1964. Lynmar Jr. grew the business, eventually transitioning the company from the dying boxed lunch industry to the contracted catering business. He provided for his family, which included another son, who now lives in California.

Andrew has been with the company full time since he graduated college 18 years ago, so he has seen it grow.

In 2001, the company expanded into the cafeterias of many regional private and preparatory schools. Today, they distribute to ten states and Washington, D.C.

No questions that Andrew is taking on a successful company, facing all the pressures of business, in addition to the 45-year legacy of his own father looming just down the hall. Lynmar Jr. will stay on in an advisory role.

“I’m very excited about the future,” Andrew said. “I very much value that my father is still in picture.”

Andrew’s mother is on staff, too, in leadership and administrative capacities. Andrew says he enjoys working with his family but knows there’s added pressure in being the boss’s son.

“It’s both exciting and a little daunting,” Andrew said.

Chicken attack in area high school

Graduates of Philadephia’s Northeast High School beware. More than 50 live chickens were let loose in the high school, forcing the school to close, the Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting. Not even joking.

Security cameras show a handful of “culprits” gained access to the school around 9:30 p.m. last night, along its Cottman Avenue entrance. They also spread chicken feed across the school’s floor.It appears to be an elaborate prank. A prank that, at least one secretary told the Inquirer, would be preferred than a school shooting or similar news that more often gives headlines to high schools. A farmer was summoned to round-up the birds and haul them away to Fox Chase Farm, the district’s agricultural school. Hefty fines are expected.

Check out presidential hair

All those years you spent collecting other people’s hair might not be as weird as we previously thought.

For President’s Day weekend Feb. 16 to 18, The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia will be displaying a scrapbook that has locks of hair from each of the first 12 U.S. Presidents, according to the Associated Press.

This collection comes from Peter Arvell Browne, a Philadelphia attorney and scholar of natural sciences, collected thousands of samples of animal and human hair in the mid-1800s.

He wrote to the families of each president and asked for the samples, which wasn’t – they tell me – as strange as it might seem today. In the 19th Century, many families kept hair from deceased relatives.

The scrapbook will only be open to George Washington’s brown and gray hair, though photographs of the others will be on display.

Should you post an alleged rapist's photo?

The Temple News, the college newspaper for which I work, is certainly one of the better student newspapers in the country. Because of it, or perhaps in spite of it, we get criticized.

Last week, we reported on the alleged rape of two women by a student leader, with lots of friends in our university’s student government.The accused is indefinitely suspended from school and is awaiting a preliminary hearing, though there are rumors the charges might be dropped.

He has not been convicted, just accused, arrested and formally charged.We published his name, his photograph and the block on which he lives, all per usual protocol of dealing with accused sex offenders, all information given to us by the city’s special victims unit.

Yet, we’ve been overcome by letters, emails, phone calls and online comments from his friends, other student leaders and more, all criticizing our tactics. Below, I’ve included an editorial we will run in Tuesday’s edition of our paper. Read it if you’d like to hear more of our perspective, but what do you think?

How much should newspapers publish? All we know? Do we have a responsibility to our readers or to the presently innocent? Read on, or comment now.

Continue reading Should you post an alleged rapist's photo?

Bill McDowell: Designing on Philadelphia's parkway

Interview and article prepared for the Philadelphia Business Journal, as filed yesterday, without edits, to run in next Friday’s edition.

Oh, Bill McDowell has built in Philadelphia before.

He was chosen as senior building executive for the design and construction of the new Philadelphia home of the Barnes Foundation on the back of a career of construction in this city.Now he’s charged with helping bring one of the most celebrated art collections in the world to the city in which he was born and raised.

“I have had a lot of experience in the city of Philadelphia,” McDowell, 50, said. Like helping develop the concept for the expansion of the Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse on the campus of St. Joseph’s University, and being involved in the planning of the 30th Street Station rail yards, and heading the redevelopment of Reading Terminal Headhouse, now the front of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, as part of the city’s Redevelopment Authority in the 1990s.

“But, by far this is the most important project I’ve ever worked on,” he said. “A project like this might just come around once in a century.”With the hiring of McDowell, who works with the architects, consultants and will hire the construction team, the new building’s design has begun.“It’s full steam ahead. Not only is this a go, it’s ‘can we go any faster?” he said. “The conceptual design process will be done this year, what it will look like. The technical aspects, we will continue to work on into 2009.”The first step is to design how the building will be situated on its future site, a high profile and, to some, controversial lot on Center City’s Ben Franklin Parkway.“I always thought the parkway in Philadephia is under utilized. The creation of density is what Philadelphia needs… to move it from being primarily an auto to a pedestrian route,” he said. “But we’re interested in retaning the qualities of the current building, to see the uniqueness and its intimacy preserved.”But one of Philadelphia’s sons has had to take a professional move to the ‘burbs, by the way of Lower Merion, the current headquarters of Barnes, for now.“For work, I have a 610 area code now, it’s tough,” he said. “At least my cell phone is still 215.”