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Neighborhood Defense.org kickoff

  By Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Urbanism

Press Release Neighborhood Defense.org kicked off its effort to repeal Act 193 today at a press conference at City Hall. Neighborhood Defense.org is an alliance of Philadelphia community associations and civic groups working to protect their longstanding rights to appeal decisions of the Zoning Board and other city agencies that regulate land use. On Monday, Neighborhood Defense.org launched a website where individuals and community organizations can register their support for the repeal of Act 193. The website will be used to fax and email state representatives and senators and create local networks of community activists who will contact and lobby their legislators. Continue reading

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Time for Comcast to be a good citizen

  By Elections and Voting, Public Policy

At YPP,  Hannah Miller agued that Comcast should be making reduced price or free television advertisements available to all political candidates. (Link coming soon.) The logic of Hannah’s argument ultimately leads to the conclusion that Ray has reached: Comcast ought to provide free time for political advertising as well as for televised debates and other election focused media events. (And, by the way, it really is about time that the city held Comcast to its contractual agreement to provide public access TV so that we have an alternative to corporate owned media in the city. You can read all about this issue at http://www.phillyaccess.org/.) Continue reading

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More on public financing

  By Elections and Voting

I am reposting something I posted in response to a debate at Young Philly Politics, which began with a good post from Hannah Miller. ——– There is no one solution to the campaign financing mess. Hannah is right: we need free TV time for candidates. We also have to ban candidates who take the free time from purchasing additional media time. That would make campaigning less expensive. But Hannah and Neil Oxman are wrong about public financing. This is one area where there really is no trade-off between spending on schools or economic development and spending on public financing of campaigns. Continue reading

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What does an endorsement mean?

  By Health Care

Many years ago, a month or so before his was elected to his second term in the House of Representatives Barney Frank wrote a funny piece in The New Republic about his first term in office. Unfortunately it is not yet in the TNR archives. I recall, however, that Barney wrote something like this: “After looking over my first term, I have to say that I’ve cast a few votes that I find myself disapproving. And I certainly missed some opportunities to speak out on some important issues. But, taking my record as a whole, and especially after comparing it to that of my opponent, I believe I’m certainly the lesser of two evils and maybe even a bit better than that. So I intend to vote for myself in November.” I recall this now because there is a dispute in Neighborhood Networks about whether to endorse Casey for Senate… Continue reading

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Progressives and Crime

  By Criminal Justice

Whenever crime becomes a major issue—as it has in Philadelphia right now—we progressives offer up a set of answers to the crime problem. Most of our answers focus on what we call the “root causes” of crime. We talk about the economic distress in neighborhoods that leaves too many people without decent jobs. We talk about the problems in families that leaves too many children without the supervision, and in some case, the love, they need to grow up right. We talk about the inadequate education that leaves too many of our young people without the skills they need to make it in the contemporary economy. We talk about the lack of after school programs, recreation programs, and mentoring programs to help the many young people who are at-risk for turning to crime. Everyone one of those ideas is right. Without economic growth that includes everyone, without decent schools that… Continue reading

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Mad dogs and Democrats

  By Pennsylvania, Progressive Politics

Some of the folks who commented on my post endorsing Casey for Senate made interesting arguments to which I want to res pond here. Albert pointed out that the process that gave us Casey will go on if we don’t stop it. And Liz said that the first rule of dog training is don’t reward behaviors you don’t want. These are arguments well worth reading and considering. But I think they both miss a key point about how our party works. Ask yourself, who is in control of this process we want to stop? Whose behavior do we want to stop rewarding? Continue reading

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Featured blog / steady work

  By About me

I have been so busy organizing around the 193 issue—about which much more later–that I didn’t notice I had been nominated as a featured blog at Philly Future. And, I won. I hope this is an omen for future elections. Thanks to all of you who nominated and voted for this blog. I’ve only been doing this since February, but it seems that the little essays I post here, essays that A Smoke Filled Room frequently calls “long but chewy,” have found a niche in the blogosphere. I know they are not for everyone all the time…I don’t always have the patience for reading them myself, which probably accounts for all the editing mistakes. And I certainly can’t write them everyday. So I encourage those of you who are new to my blog to dip into the archives. Aside from the posts that are announcements of political events, few of… Continue reading

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Against Independence

  By Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Political Organizing, Politics

This post is occasioned by the entry of Michael Nutter into the Mayor’s race. But it is not meant to be a critique of Nutter, who is someone I like in many ways despite my doubts about his ideas on taxation. (I’ll write about him and other Mayoral candidates soon.) It is, however, a critique of a style of politics that Michael Nutter, more than any other Mayoral candidate, exemplifies. You might call it the politics of independence. It is a style of politics that I grew up with, and that is important for some people in Neighborhood Networks. But it is a style of politics that I have come to distrust and that I hope will play less and less a role in Neighborhood Networks and other progressive circles in future. The politics of independence has an ideal for candidates and an ideal for voters. Continue reading

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Political disaster strikes city neighborhoods

  By Philadelphia, Urbanism, Zoning

The City of Philadelphia suffered a disaster this week. It was not a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, but a disaster created by our political leaders. Recent rulings by Philadelphia Common Pleas Judges have undermined the right of community organizations and neighborhood groups to appeal variances granted by the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA). As a result, the right of these organizations and groups to even appear in front of the Zoning Board has been called into question. Continue reading