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Ms. Campbell and me
reposted from YPP http://youngphillypolitics.com/carol_campbell_passes_away I didn’t know Carol Campbell that long. But it seems like I had a long history with her. Continue reading
Category: About me
Sorry for our problems
My blog crashed on Wednesday. I’ve reinstalled it but I won’t have a chance to put up the posts that were here for a rew days. Thanks for your patience. Continue reading
On ward politics and street money
Originally posted at Young Philly Politics. A number of my responses to comments made at YPP are below There is an article in the Inquirer today that briefly reports on some of my experiences with ward politics during the last election. I was disappointed by the article, in part because I thought I was talking off the record with the reporter and in part because the article is misleading about the role that wards and street money played in my campaign or other grass roots campaigns. (The Inquirer will be running a clarification about part of the article tomorrow.) I plan to write about this subject in detail later, because these are two subjects that most people interested in Philadelphia politics do not understand very well and about which I learned a great deal in the last five months. Here are some preliminary points. Continue reading
Thank you all from Marc Stier
Dear Friends, I want to thank all of you who voted for me on Tuesday. And I want to thank even more all of you who worked for me in various ways—going door to door with my literature, working the polls, sending out emails to your friends, making phone calls, and raising or contributing money. I am honored and humbled to have had so many good people around the city believe in both me and the ideas I presented during this campaign. I am, of course, disappointed by the result. I knew from the start that this was going to be a difficult race. But the response I was getting around the city was so positive and supportive that there were one or two moments when I thought I might even squeak by. Optimism is certainly useful in a race as difficult as the one I ran. But, even after… Continue reading
Bob Brady's finest hour
Bob Brady campaigned extremely hard up to the end, even though he had known for some time that he had little chance to win. But, as he said at a ward meeting I attended, the situation in the Mayor’s race was fluid. And as he did not say…but some of us knew…by campaigning hard in particular areas of the city, and by running hard hitting ads against Knox, Brady helped made Michael Nutter win. He did not, as far as I know, release ward leaders to support Michael Nutter. And that, too was a good move because had he done so, many of those ward leaders might have supported Knox. Continue reading
One From the Heart (and the Head): Marc Stier for Council At Large
By Sam Durso on YPPon Sun, 05/13/2007 – 8:21pm. I generally don’t post other people’s writings here. But this was such a nice thing Sam Durso wrote about me that I’d like to put it up. Should politicians be nice guys? My stock answer for a long time has been that it doesn’t matter. Some very driven, aggressive, nasty people actually make effective and useful public servants, and some nice guys end up being very corrupt or inept. But having thought about city politics more intently this year than any before, I’d like to amend that. Given the job he or she must perform, an At Large Councilperson should be a really good person. That’s one reason why the first At Large vote I’ll cast will be for Marc Stier. An At-Larger has this funny job of representing the entire city, as though he were mayor, but as a legislator… Continue reading
I want the best service: How to save hundreds of lives by fixing emergency service
I wrote this with Daniel Hunter during my campaign for City Council in 2007. If you are shot——or have a heart attack—where would you rather be, New York City or Philadelphia? If you want to stay alive, the unfortunate answer is New York City. Why? New York City has invested resources in emergency medical services. And they don’t hamstringing their paramedics, fire fighters, and police with unreasonable rules. Here’s one example: New York City has far more ambulances per person than Philadelphia. They have so many ambulances, in fact, that they don’t have enough stations for all of them. That’s why you see many parked on street corners waiting for a call. In Philadelphia the situation is the opposite. We have too few ambulances. So when police rush onto the scene after someone is shot, they often arrive long before an ambulance. As a result, they have to put gunshot… Continue reading
Haircuts and contributions and me
I read in the Daily News today that John Edwards is paying for haircuts that cost from $225 to $400 out of his campaign contributions, including one haircut from a “a trendy salon and spa in Dubuque, Iowa.” Since I am working hard right now to raise money for the last month of the campaign–and people comment about how I’m actually keeping my hair short during the campaign–I want everyone to know that I get my hair cut at Julius Scissor on Locust Street, as I have for 22 years, and that I pay for those haircuts out of my own pocket, except for one day, when I paid for my haircut, and my campaign manager’s, with the wrong checkbook. I repaid the campaign as soon as I discovered the mistake. If you want to help my campaign, you can do so by contributing on-line at http://www.stier2007.com/contribute. Or you can… Continue reading
The second time as farce
The spate of challenges by progressives to their competitors reminds me of the famous lines of Karl Marx: “Hegel says that history repeats itself. He forgets to add, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” If the first time was the establishment’s use of technical challenges to undermine progressives, the second time is the progressives’ use of the same kinds of challenges to undermine their competitors. I certainly understand why candidates working incredibly hard to win an election are inclined to use every means in the book to do so. And I also understand why they are tempted to use the old guard’s tactics against the old guard, especially when so many of us have suffered because of those tactics. But revenge is never a good motive to do anything. All these challenges on the basis of the statement of financial interests are not really in keeping… Continue reading
Against repealing contribution limits
I oppose any legislation that would have the effect of eliminating campaign contribution limits in the current Mayoral race. The goal of campaign finance reform is to preserve our democracy. Democracy is undermined when money becomes so important in politics that those who contribute to campaigns play a dramatically greater role in determining who holds office—and thus what our office holders do—than our citizens. So I am concerned about both limiting the influence of those who contribute to the campaigns of others and those who contribute to their own campaigns. In order to attain both goals, I proposed last week a compromise that would lift campaign contribution limits gradually if a candidate for Mayor increased his contributions to his own campaign. Rather than being a serious compromise, the new bill goes so far in lifting contribution limits as to make them meaningless. It is a fig leaf that doesn’t cover… Continue reading