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Best practices on city taxation in a recession: a proposed project for YPP

  By Philadelphia, Taxation

Most of us here, and to judge from the poll Ray and Dan sponsored, most of the city, believes that we should not be cutting taxes when our services are being reduced so much. We should be, at least temporarily, delay the wage tax cuts. But what do you do when the strong mayor of our city totally disagrees and when the members of City Council who, in addition to having the usual disinclination of politicians to raise taxes, are also disinclined to pick a fight with the Mayor in his first (of most likely eight) years in office. Where do we get the leverage to move the debate in the city. The poll helped, but what do we do now? For one thing, we can keep pointing out that the rationale for cutting taxes–to influence the location decisions of businesses and residents–is substantially less important when businesses and residents… Continue reading

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More on Facebook pictures and their consequences

  By Photography

Since I posted a blog post, and an accompanying note on Facebook, about how Facebook pictures shape the way we look at ourselves and others, I’ve been thinking on and off about how photographs shape our experience of life. For example, how much of what we remember of people’s faces is a product not of what we see of them in the flesh but of the pictures we see of them? Continue reading

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Can the articles about teen-age blow jobs be far behind?

  By Love and Sex

Tension between generations undoubtedly goes back to the time when extended families or tribes became part of larger communities, thereby giving young people the possibility of forming attachments and loyalties outside their own tribe. It got a new source of energy when companionate marriage arose to challenge the right of parents to marry off their children as they saw fit. It intensified again when adolescence and a distinctive youth culture was created in the early twentieth century. And it took its contemporary form in the fifties and sixties when rock and roll and the pill made sex (and drug and rock n roll) panics the preferred manner in which the older generated condemned the behavior of the younger generation. The latest sex panic article appeared in the op-ed pages of the New York Times yesterday. A piece by Charles M. Blow reports that dating appears to be dying among young… Continue reading

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Natural Childbirth is Medicated Childbirth

  By Love and Sex, Sexual and gender equality

An article in the Times has finally gotten me to write on a subject that has bugged me for a long time: our sexist denial of the pain of childbirth. The Times reports that some advanced thinkers are suggesting that not only should women be able to have relatively pain-free natural childbirth but that they should be able to have orgasms during childbirth. You see, if putting something into a woman’s vagina in the right circumstances—soft lights, relaxation, appropriate other forms of stimulation—cause orgasms, then why shouldn’t something coming out of the vagina do as well? Considering that it has only been in the last thirty years that we have gotten over the sexist notion that the only “mature” orgasm is one that results from vaginal stimulation, I am already suspicious of the notion that child birth should be a source of pleasure for women But not only does this… Continue reading

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Be there for health care at Obama house parties

  By Health Care

The movement for health Care reform is moving forward now. And it has to because defeating the insurance companies is going to take a massive effort. . President-elect Obama has a mandate for reform having made the issue central to his campaign. Obama spent over $100 million in health care television advertising and, in October, 86 percent of his total ad budget was spent on advertisements that mentioned the issue. And in case anyone was wondering whether the financial and economic crises are going to delay health care reform, the answer is “no.” As President-elect Obama said time and time again, reforming health care is critical to fixing our economy. That’s why the Obama team and Health Care For America Now is moving forward to build our movement now. President-elect Obama is asking people to hold house parties to discuss health care reform in the next two weeks. I’m holding… Continue reading

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Awful Facebook pictures and our sense of self

  By Photography

I keep getting struck by how many pictures of so many of us are up on Facebook…and how unflattering many of those pictures are. When I was growing up, there weren’t that many pictures of us and most of them were posed. People tried to look their best in those posed pictures and while we didn’t always attain that goal, we were rarely caught in strange, unflattering poses. And if we looked really bad in a picture it was easy to get rid of it. On Facebook there are so many candid photos of us looking anything but our best. And there is no controlling these pictures as there are so many of them and its practically impossible to get rid of the last digital copy of a phot. Continue reading

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FDR, Obama, and the Path to Health Care Reform in 2009

  By Health Care, US

I’ve been giving these remarks at talks around the state in the last few weeks, most recently at the Neighborhood Networks conference last week. My aim is to bring people up to date on the state of health care reform and inspire them to join our movement, In a day or so, Health Care For America Now is going to announce the next stage in our effort to build a powerful movement for reform. So this is a good moment to let you all know where things stand. Continue reading

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You Want to See Broken Politics: Just Look at the Casinos Revisited

  By Casinos, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

I wrote this post on December 5, 2006 when a series of bad decisions on the part of our Mayor and Council had reinforced the even worse decisions of our Governor and General Assembly and created a steamroller bringing casinos to our waterfront. Now, almost two years later, we have a steamroller bringing one of those casinos to the Gallery. I could analyze this shift more thorougly.  But it seems much simpler now to just repost this. For the new day, new way has not brought anything very much new in the casino siting process. Continue reading

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Slowly coming back

  By About this blog

I had some technical problems with this blog site when I moved it to a new server earlier in the year which caused the site to crash. All my old posts were lost. I’ve been blogging at Young Philly Politics, which is a great on-line community. But I’ve been hoping to restart this blog, partly as a way of helping people find my old posts that appeared there and here and partly because I want a place to post longer, more ruminative pieces, that are not really approprite for YPP. So now that I’ve had some time to fix the technical problems, I’m going to be blogging here again. Some posts, but not all, will appear at YPP, too. And I’m going to gradually repost what I think of as the best of my old posts here, leaving out the topical ones about this meeting or that rally. It’s going to take… Continue reading