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Sen. Anthony Williams’ Racist Remarks Are Disgraceful

By CHRIS FREIND

If you’re wondering why race relations in America haven’t improved at all, look no farther than the recent comments of state Senator Anthony Williams’ concerning the current field of Democratic gubernatorial candidates.

Fueling speculation that Williams, who is black, might throw his hat into the race, the senator ranted that none of the four Democrats was giving any attention to the black community and the issues faced by that constituency.

In other words, since they are all white, they were just catering to Whitey and ignoring everyone else.

Gee, and I thought campaigns were supposed to be color-blind.
Williams is correct that none of the Democrats has workable solutions to the monumental problems we face —black or otherwise. Ironically, it is the Republican platform that holds the key to success for Williams’ people.

But here’s the bigger irony: so-called black leaders like Sen. Williams’ do more to harm their “own people” than any white politician ever could. Despite the majority of black Americans holding Republican, and in many cases conservative, values, their black “leadership” sells them out time and time again by perpetuating policies destined to fail.

A look at Williams’ hometown of Philadelphia gives a startling example.

The city has been under Democratic leadership for sixty years — one-Party rule with no competition. And how has that bastion of leadership fared?

Philadelphia has the nation’s highest rates of murder, violence and poverty. Its educational system is abysmal, with many of the public schools being deathtraps, totally devoid of all learning and where survival is the first—and only— order of the day.

But that’s just the beginning.

The city’s pensions are insolvent. The business climate continues to decline due to the brain drain of our best and brightest. The tax system is so onerous that it ranks as worst in the nation. Its court system has completely imploded. People and businesses continue to flee to more fertile areas.

And the city’s reputation for corruption and pay-to-play is legendary.
So what do people like Sen. Williams do to address these problems? And, by the way, since the city’s population is majority black, these would be the problems facing “his” people.

Here’s the cruel joke. Williams’ actions, not those of The White Man, keep his constituents down and out, ripping hope away from the very people who most need help.

Williams’ solution to the terrible business climate? Raise the city portion of the sales tax by 100 percent and make no payments to the pension plan for two years. Brilliant Anthony! Penalize those who can least afford it (it is undisputed that a sales tax is the most regressive tax) and renege on the promises made to retired workers.

And what about education? Throw huge money at the schools, appease the powerful teachers’ unions, look the other way, and pretend that the results will somehow change. It hasn’t worked in decades, and it never will.

Until we get serious about providing a quality education in a safe learning environment, our students —our future— will continue to be thrown into the world as functional illiterates. And after the last flame of hope is extinguished for these children, they resort to violent crime because they have nothing left to lose.

The cycle simply perpetuates itself. Over and over again.

It is clear that the Democratic Party doesn’t have the answers, because nothing it has tried has worked. The GOP, on the other hand, has the solutions. It just needs a powerful and courageous leader to articulate the message. But leaders in the Republican Party are in short supply.

Up until the 1930’s, the vast majority of blacks were Republican, members of the Party of Lincoln. Why the Party and one of its natural constituencies parted ways is for another column, but there’s no reason that separation has to continue.

Consider:

Who wants and needs school choice more than the black community — people who, more than anyone else, have no choice in their children’s education?

Who advocates tough-on-crime legislation and gun ownership so that neighborhoods can start to thrive again, where children don’t have to sleep on the floor to avoid bullets?

Who is hurt the most by ever-increasing taxes, fees and regulations, and who needs a healthy business climate to attract and keep the good jobs necessary to provide opportunities and sustain families?

What ethnic group more than any other opposes gay marriage?

The answer to these questions is that all Pennsylvanians benefit from these common-sense, free-market answers to our toughest problems. But for those among us who are suffering the most, these Republican-oriented ideas are more than just workable and proven solutions. They are the difference between hope and despair— life and death.

So let me shout it to those in the cheap seats one more time (that’s you, Sen. Williams): quit the race-baiting game and stop being part of the problem. If you truly want to do something for your “people,” then embrace the solutions that will get the job done.

Anything less is just….racism.

Chris Freind is an independent columnist and investigative reporter whose news site, The Artorius News Bureau, is slated to launch in mid-February. Readers of “Freindly Fire” hail from six continents, thirty countries and all fifty states. Freind also serves as a weekly guest commentator on a Philadelphia-area talk radio show, and makes numerous other television and radio appearances. He can be reached at CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

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Not entirely unexpected, but still takes some chutzpah.

The plaintiff is Katherine Conway-Russell, a Philadelphia resident who has worked for ACORN since March 2008 as an office director. It was Conway-Russell who met with Giles and O’Keefe, posing as a prostitute and pimp as they had in ACORN offices nationwide during other installments of the undercover video series, for a private interview in her office at ACORN’s facility in Philadelphia on July 24, 2009. This is the first such suit filed against the filmmakers by an individual ACORN employee.

The complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claims that the Giles and O’Keefe “purportedly sought information regarding housing and mortgage opportunities in Philadelphia, but were in reality imposters who deliberately and surreptitiously created video and audio recordings in an attempt to discredit plaintiff Conway-Russell and ACORN Housing Corporation,” and that they subsequently “disseminated the illegally obtained recordings in a manner calculated to harm and injure” Katherine Conway-Russell.

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CBS3.com

Philadelphia Police are investigating the discovery of a Molotov cocktail along with anti-Israeli books inside a Center City parking garage.

The discovery was made at about 2:00 p.m. Wednesday inside a garage located at Callowhill and N. 16th Streets. The garage is in close proximity to the office of the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices.

Those two things are often found together.

We can only blame radical Episcopalians.

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Funny, just the other day Congressman Jack Murtha said Al-Qaida wasn’t much of a threat.

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Upper Merion Township is one of the richest townships in the state. A strong tax base consisting of the gargantuan King of Prussia Mall is matched by the number of businesses that call King of Prussia home. This good fortune has kept property taxes low and income taxes non-existent in Upper Merion Township for years.

So when I heard last night that the Township was threatening the U.M. Police force with either a layoff of 4 officers from the force of 66 or a two and a half week unpaid furlough for all officers, I had to stop and think: Just how poorly does a Township budget have to be managed that Upper Merion would be forced to balance the budget on the backs of it’s police officers?

The Township public works employees have already decided to take the unpaid furlough rather than face layoffs themselves. Tensions and emotions apparently ran high at the Board of Supervisors meeting last night, but even after residents, police and police supporters all had their say, the U.M. Board of Supervisors voted 5 – 0 to approve the resolution, meaning the cops have until the end of the year to decide whether they will all forgo their negotiated 5% pay increase by taking the unpaid furlough, or lose four of their co-workers.

Township Managers, who took great umbrage at accusations that they did not respect the works that the cops do, fell back on that old standard:

“Every stakeholder has been affected in this budget — residents, employees, everyone — no one is getting off Scott free on any of this and we all have to be in this together,” said township supervisor Erika Spott.

You gotta love that “We’re all in this together” bit. It’s what every fat cat politician says when tough economic times force them to face the consequences of years of poor fiscal decisions. I grew up in Upper Merion township and my father was a cop there for 37 years. I do not remember the township ever proposing police layoffs as a solution to budget woes, though my memory could be faulty. But a township that has such a strong fiscal base as Upper Merion should not now be facing such draconian budget issues, yet they are; police and public works are basic services that a Township is supposed to provide. Cutting these services should be a measure of last resort.

If it is not, the stories covering this issue today in The Times Herald and NBC10 amount to little more than a narrative of last night’s supervisor’s meetingand offer little in the way of illuminating how things came to such a sorry pass in U.M. . There is no background about when the contract was negotiated and what budget cuts were already enacted.

**Sigh**

If only we had a news organization that was capable of asking questions like this so the news consuming public could really be informed.

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About those Governor’s Mansion curtains….

A Dauphin County jury deliberated for less than three hours before acquitting former state Rep. Sean Ramaley of six felonies in the first Bonusgate case to come to trial.

Ramaley, 34, of Baden, was accused of doing no state work while being paid $2,500 a month to be a part-time legislative assistant to former Democratic House Whip Mike Veon in his Beaver Falls office in 2004 — at the same time Ramaley was running for state representative.

Ramaley, who won the election, went on to serve another term in the statehouse. After being charged last year, he decided not to run for the state Senate or seek a third House term.

Corbett should have picked a slam dunk case for his first trial… this will not be good.

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Totally, logically consistant, you know.

Because it’s for medicinal purposes.

The measure by Rep. Mark Cohen, D-202, Philadelphia, would provide for state licensing and inspection of “compassion” centers where marijuana can be used with a doctor’s recommendation by patients suffering from HIV, AIDS, cancer and other illnesses.

It would provide patients with immunity from arrest if they have a registry identification card and have no more than six marijuana plants and one ounce of marijuana in their possession. The state would levy a sales tax on the sale of marijuana for medical use if the bill becomes law.

Mr. Cohen and supporters of the legislation argued it would ease the pain and suffering of sick people and provide a medical alternative to prescription drugs that have adverse side effects.

State Rep Mark Cohen, on his blog from June 2007.

I feel the issue here is not loyalty to the bad habits of smoking family members; true loyalty to smokers lies in efforts to encourage them to improve their health and stop smoking. Stopping smoking greatly improved the health of my father, my mother, my wife and scores of millions of other Americans.The issue is public health. Yes, here and there are smokers who lead long and healthy lives. But, on the whole, the more one smokes, the shorter one’s life will be, the more one will miss work, the more doctors bills and hospital bills one will incur, and the more costs employers and taxpayers will have to pay to subsidize these health care costs.

To reiterate… nicotine delivered via a filtered cigarette from a big corporation = bad. THC delivered via unfiltered bong or joint from your local friendly government = good.

For the record, I’m not against marijuana decriminalization. Unfortunately, we live in a nanny state, perpetuated by the likes of Mr Cohen, who believe that a person’s bad actions and poor decisions can be compensated by convivial taxpayers helped by do-gooding “public servants.”

Smoke cigarettes and get lung cancer? Fine. Don’t ask me to pay for your chemo.

Mess around in high school with your “true love”? Que Sera Sera. Don’t expect us to raise you and your kid.

Drink excessively and kill your liver? Fine. I’m not replacing it for you.
Kill someone while drunk? We’re not going to excuse you.

Get high and fry your brain? By all means. Drive a fork lift into a gasoline tanker? Go to jail.

So… I’m actually against it for now.

Oh, I know the cries will go up, that this is just helping the sick & etc… and I am absolutely sympathetic, but this is going to be abused… and we’re going to pay for it.

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Drawing and quartering would be too nice for this piece of shit.

An eastern Pennsylvania jury took just an hour to convict an HIV-positive man of raping a 12-year-old girl.

Jurors in Northampton County on Wednesday convicted 25-year-old Shaun Austin, of Bath, on charges including rape of a child and statutory sexual assault. Prosecutors say Austin had unprotected sex with the then-12-year-old girl in late 2007 and 2008.

No word on the disposition of the victim.

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As was their custom, four Lakewood, Washington police officers met at a local coffee house before their shift began, to exchange information, catch-up on paperwork and browse the internet. This morning, things went horribly wrong:

The officers – three male and one female – were in full uniform and wearing bulletproof vests, sitting in Forza coffee shop near 116th Street and Steele Street on the east side of the Air Force base at about 8:30 a.m., preparing for their shift when the suspect walked in, went up to the counter as if to order coffee, then turned and opened fire.

[Pierce county sheriff's spokesman Ed] Troyer called it an “ambush.”

“They had marked police cars, marked uniforms, there were other people inside the facility, they weren’t shot, wounded or hurt or even aimed at, just the police officers were,” said Troyer.

It wasn’t clear whether the officers even had time to draw their weapons to return fire, Troyer said.

“This was more of an execution. Walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers,” Troyer said.

NBC10 is reporting that one of the officers is a Pennsylvania native:

One of four Lakewood police officers shot and killed in an ambush at a coffee shop in Parkland, Washington Sunday morning was from the Lehigh Valley area, according to family members.

Officer Mark Renninger, 39, was born and raised in Bethlehem and went to Washington State because of his military service, according to his brother Michael Renninger

It’s believed that one of the officers may have had time to get a shot off and that the assailant may be wounded. Police have a suspect:

Pierce county sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said they are looking for Maurice Clemmons, 37.

Troyer said Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft. He has also recently been arrested and charged in Pierce County for assault on a police officer and for rape of a child.

Officer Mark Renninger is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son. Donations for the officers’ families can be sent to: LPIG Benevolent Fund at PO Box 99579 Lakewood, WA 98499.

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… and gets immunity.

The grand jury presentment Corbett released mentions Scott Migli, campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, who will face Corbett in the 2010 Republican primary. The grand jury found that former House Speaker John Perzel, charged with theft and conspiracy, gave Migli a $100,000-a-year job in the fall of 2006 that produced “no meaningful legislative work” before he left in 2008.

“I did nothing wrong,” Migli said. “The Attorney General’s Office made it clear when they initially reached out to me that they were not after me.”

Gerlach’s campaign has attacked Corbett for months over his handling of the legislative investigation, saying Corbett should resign because it’s a conflict of interest to investigate state political leaders while seeking their support. Migli yesterday pointed to a meeting between Perzel and Corbett in October 2007, when Perzel tried to sell Corbett on a software package for his child predator unit.

Scott Migli was the executive director for the Pa GOP.

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Here’s your link for the streaming video.

Update: Perzel is the biggest name so far, former Rep Brett Feese.

Perzel is looking at 82 counts.

The other eight names are staffers.

Update: The picture:

Update: Charges are not for bonses, but a re-election campaign machine on taxpayer dollars.

Update: As expected, these indictments are painted as political opportunism by the indicted. Corbett did not respond.

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Friends,

I am pleased to inform you that Philadelphia has been selected to host a monthly Center-Right Coalition meeting, following the hugely-successful model of Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR). We will be one of the few non-state capital cities to have such a gathering.

The kick-off meeting, which I will be hosting, will be Thursday, November 12 at the Union League in Philadelphia, with Mr. Norquist in attendance. Light refreshments will be served at 7:00 AM, with the program going from 7:30 to 9:00. The Union League is located at 140 S. Broad Street, just two blocks south of City Hall.

In Grover’s words, the objective is “to get everybody who is center-right to tell each other what they are doing, to share technology and tactics, and to tell stories” regarding issues facing Pennsylvania and the nation.

One key function, according to ATR, is to facilitate collaborative activities of coalition members, many of whom may have not previously known one another, and foster the potential for mutual cooperation.

The rules are simple: Anyone who so desires may speak for three minutes on current initiatives, answer questions, and pass the microphone to the next speaker.

The only prohibition is whining. It is a positive meeting, one that will unify southeastern Pennsylvania.

Attendees will typically include influential political, business, policy and grassroots leaders.

If anyone who would like several minutes on the agenda, please let me know.

You are encouraged to bring any literature for distribution.

I hope to see you next Thursday.

For future reference, the monthly meetings will be held on the FIRST THURSDAY of each month at the Union League, with the same time format as above.

Feel free to invite colleagues and associates. All meetings are off the record.

Steadfast,

Christopher Freind
“Freindly Fire”
Audaces fortuna iuvat
610-659-0098
christopherfreind@hotmail.com (E before I in Freind)
CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

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Need some tax tips for how to run your brothel full of underage illegal alien prostitutes? The community organizers at ACORN are here to help!

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Gun control advocates present gun crime statistics as manifest evidence of an urgent need to curtail the second amendment. While there are legitimate arguments that the right to keep and bear arms was intended for militias and not private citizens, individual right to bear arms is far less contrived than these three rights that no one thought existed for the first 170+ years of the nation’s history.

Gideon v. Wainright (1963) said every accused criminal has the right to an attorney at trial, at taxpayer expense if the defendant can’t afford one.

Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) said every suspect has the right to an attorney at questioning, at taxpayer expense.

Miranda v. Arizona (1966) said every suspect has the right to have his or her rights explained to them, including the new rights fabricated in Gideon and Escobedo.

All three of these rights have increased crime. Since 1964, the crime rate has risen 350%. The homicide rate, as depicted by this DoJ, Bureau of Justice Statistics demonstrates surged in the wake of these cases.

The practical effect of Escobedo and Miranda was to keep juries from ever knowing about evidence and testimony that were gathered if suspects didn’t have an attorney or hadn’t been told they could have one, on the house. Criminals went free because of these exclusions.
The right of an individual to keep and bear arms was recognized as early as 1886 in Presser v. IL, without an accompanying spike in the homicide rate, or in the very least at a time too early to have reliable statistics.

I’m not calling any of these four rights objectively contrived, but if we are to restrict any of them in the interest of preventing violent crime, shouldn’t we maybe start with the ones that 1) contribute most directly to the rise in crime and 2) are the most distantly related to those rights we’ve enshrined in the Constitution?

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Alex, how sad that the media will not be able to claim that the murdering bastard was a devout Christian man who shot up the LA Fitness in order to destroy “unclean” women, or whatever crap the media thinks we Christians believe.

Instead, they’ll say that this is another reason why law-abiding citizens shouldn’t have Second Amendment rights.

In reality, it seems that this pathetic “man” was angry that the women wouldn’t stop in the middle of their exercise routines to talk to him, so he wanted to take his revenge on them. So not only was he evil and self-obsessed, but he was also a complete imbecile. People go to places like LA Fitness to exercise, not to find a date.

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Pittsburgh news stations are reporting that a man walked into the LA Fitness in Bridgeville and opened fire. There are reportedly 15 wounded and 5 dead including the gunman. CNN, Drudge, and Reuters among others have picked up the story.

What the hell is going on in this town?

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Risa Vetri-Ferman is the D.A. of Montgomery County. She has also been very willing to address my questions about the shooting the Schuykill River Bike Trail last week.

To recap, on July 22, Joseph DePaul was riding his bike on the Schuykill River Trail in Plymouth Township. He was approached by a couple of kids, a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old, who then kicked him in the ribs. DePaul, who had been a vicitm of a similar crime previously, was armed. He pulled his weapon and fired six shots at the retreating juveniles, hitting the bike tire of the 17-year-old’s bike.

Though DePaul had a permit for the gun, he was initially charged with criminal attempt at murder, criminal attempt at voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and related offenses and was held in Montgomery County Prison on $250,000 cash bail.

DePaul’s bail was reduced over the weekend and on Monday, D.A. Ferman held a press conference on Monday, revealing that the county’s investigation had uncovered a “bike chop shop” apparently being run by the 17-year-old SRT rib kicker out of his basement. His bike of choice? Mongoose. DePaul’s bike? Mongoose.

Since the press, having already succeeded in driving up the anti-gun hysteria over a man shooting at two unarmed kids on the trail, has since been distracted from the original story by the discovery of the chop shop, I wanted to know what happened to DePaul. D.A. Ferman was happy to fill in the blanks:

I directed that the original complaint charging attempt murder, etc. againt Depaul be withdrawn today. That was done. Depaul will be charged tomorrow with recklessly endageringly another person. This is a misdemeanor. In my judgement, the REAP charge best fits the circumstances here where the man recklessly fired multiple shots towards a fleeing target 200-250 feet away in a location where other people could have easily been hit. Depaul could very easily have shot and killed a totally innocent bystander on the trail by his actions that night.

IMHO, this seems appropriate and fair. While many of us can certainly sympathize, and even understand DePaul’s reaction, I think we can all agree that DePaul over-reacted; he was in no immediate danger when he fired off the rounds–after all the two yutes were retreating. Ferman continues:

This is the practical problem we face right now on the trail; how do we handle citizens exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protect themselves who either (a) do so recklessly and endanger the lives of other innocent people, or (b) are not legally justified in using deadly force. There is no bright line test or answer. We will have to evaluate each situation like this on a case by case basis, review the specific facts, apply the law, and decide what is right and fair under the circumstances. Bottom line, we have to do the right thing in each case.

In this case, justice was served. And hopefully other would-be SRT thugs are paying attention.

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This is the face of a man wanted for questioning in a rape incident that happened in the next town over from me. He allegedly stalked the victim in my local WalMart and followed her home.

KYW:

The hunt is on for a Montgomery County man who police say sexually assaulted a teenager Monday afternoon after following her home from Walmart.

Investigators have identified the suspect as 33-year-old Seth Griffith (above) of the 500 block of Haws Avenue in Norristown.

But authorities believe he have fled to Lewistown — about 30 miles southeast of State College.

Surveillance video shows the suspect following the 19-year-old victim as she shopped in the Walmart in West Norriton. Police believe he followed her back to Lower Providence, entered her Audubon home, and assaulted her in her bedroom.

Turtle says he doesn’t know why Griffith targeted the woman:

“At this point in time, I would say we are determining it a random act. We don’t have anything either from the victim or from any other source that says she knows or has known or has met this suspect in the past.”

On store surveillance (right), a man fitting Griffith’s description can be seen walking around the store and watching her.

District attorney Risa Ferman calls the alleged incident terrifying:

“Being out in a commercial establishment, feeling safe and secure, going inside the security of your own home and having that violated, there’s really very little that is as frightening as that.”

Griffith faces charges of criminal attempted rape, sexual assault, burglary, and related offenses.

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One of the first things you learn as a little kid is not to take things that don’t belong to you. A surprising twist in the shooting incident on the Schuykill River Trail in Montco:

Montgomery County authorities have uncovered what they describe as a bicycle “chop shop” inside a house in Norristown, Pa., and now they want to know if it’s connected to some recent assaults on the Schuylkill River bike trail.

Police executed a search warrant at the house late last week and found nearly twenty bicycles and dozens of bicycle parts.

Montgomery County district attorney Risa Ferman says the house belongs to the father of a 17-year-old who was taken into custody after he and another teen were involved in an altercation with a man who fired shots at them on the trail last Wednesday (see related story):

“He was obtaining bicycles — and we are investigating how he was obtaining them — and then in the basement of his home he was taking parts, constructing bikes and reconstructing bikes, and then selling them.”

She believes that hundreds of bikes may have gone through that house over the last several months.

Now, police want to hear from area residents who may have had their bicycles stolen, either on or off the Schuylkill River trail.

I had originally wondered what the motivation was for these punks to harass bikers, since bikers and walkers rarely carry anything of value on them when using the trail. Authorities say that most of the bikes that went through the “chop shop” were Mongoose bikes, which are not all that expensive–you can get them at Target for between $200 and $300 bucks. But I guess even if you’re selling them for less than that–say $100 bucks a piece–it’s still 100% profit.

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Soren Dayton looks at AG Tom Corbett and US Attorney Pat Meehan run ins with former Democrat Senator Vince Fumo and writes

Corruption is the sort of thing that suppresses Democrat-leaning independent turnout in formerly Republican suburbs in Bucks and Montgomery countes, and, to a lesser extent, in Chester and Delaware counties. And the South Philly turnout operation that Fumo was so effective at selling is probably somewhat reduced in effectiveness. Democrats can’t win statewide without huge margins out of southeast Pennsylvania. You couldn’t build a better script for reducing those margins.

A Corbett/Meehan or Meehan/Corbett ticket brings instant crime-fighting credibility… especially in the Southeast where the Fumo story was a big deal.

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