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Reality Check: THE SHADY SHADOW (INTERIM) DA ELECTION
The last thing Philly needed right now was a shadow election. Yet, that’s what we got: an anti-transparent, somewhat anti-democratic and shadowy process whereby a near Star Chamber of 88 Philadelphia...
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Reality Check: Who decides what buildings to preserve?
Reality Check recently had Drexel University’s Harris Steinberg, newly minted chair of the city’s sparkling Historic Preservation Task Force, on the show for an incisive interview. But back in April...
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Reality Check: Context, Anyone?
Turns out that Philly has a statue problem, too. It’s probably nowhere near the level that Charlottesville was (and still is, according to some reports). And since it’s not, historically, a...
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Reality Check: Is Kneeling Enough?
As players kneeled and protesters converged on the National Football League’s headquarters in New York this past week, Reality Check listeners were left with an important question: Was that enough?...
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Reality Check: Just How Much Influence Does the Philly FOP Have?
There is definitely a proxy war happening between the Philadelphia police union and the city’s brewing, outraged class of progressive activists (a.k.a. Black Lives Matter) that could be, inadvertently...
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REALITY CHECK: PROTEST WITHOUT END
The protest is always an essential tool of American democracy, or any democracy, or any society in need of a democracy for that matter. But there are moments when the protest goes overboard, when it...
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Reality Check: The Real Parking Wars
While they might seem miles apart, they’re very much interconnected: Parking tickets and poverty. The former may be feeding off the latter like a parasite, yet there’s not a whole lot of conversation...
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Reality Check: Go Vote, Please!
As we enter October, month of surprises, one thing is becoming abundantly unsurprising: Philadelphia forgot it has elections coming up. That was the unfortunate thing about the Democratic primary for...
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Reality Check: Are guns the new tobacco?
Nationally, we’ve pretty much got used to the routine of reaction to mass shootings. Once the shock wears off, we’re grappling with a mix of heartbreak and outrage. Soon after, we’ve launched into a...
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Reality Check: Four Reasons Krasner May Lose the DA’s Race
Let’s first kick this off by saying that I’ve got nothing against Democratic District Attorney candidate Larry Krasner. In fact, it would be nice if Krasner won simply because, not unlike many others,...
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Reality Check: How does the Parking Authority spend its revenue?
Several weeks ago, after a Reality Check column about the disproportionate amount of parking tickets in black neighborhoods, City Council announced a hearing about the Philadelphia Parking Authority....
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REALITY CHECK: Another “for the kids” tax?
There is one thing Republicans in Washington, D.C., and the elected officials in the City of Philadelphia have in common: taxing the poor. That habit of shifting the cost burden of government onto the...
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Reality Check: Who Really Won This Election?
Amid all the celebration in a post-Seth Williams world, where Philly just elected a social justice reformer as its top law enforcement official, let’s not forget what else we saw last Tuesday: The city...
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Reality Check: How Do We Pay for Local Control of the Schools?
With Philadelphia now in the post-School Reform Commission world and headed rapidly towards local control of its schools, the question turns to something city officials have given little thought to:...
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Reality Check: Riding SEPTA While Elderly
A measure of a city’s character hinges on how well it treats its senior citizens. In Philly, one aspect of that is how easy it is for senior citizens to travel from their homes to the rest of the city....
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Reality Check: Who cares about bullying in Philly?
Philadelphia and the Denver suburb of Aurora, CO might be over 1,700 miles apart, but there are some distressing similarities in the way they’re both treating the ugly social trend of bullying. In...
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Reality Check: Beyond Stop-and-Go
The scene at Philadelphia City Council during its last meeting of the year was a controlled but raw emotional battlefield of Black residents versus Asian business owners. Racial lines were clearly...
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Reality Check: Where is the real outrage over parking?
It’s about time the Philadelphia Parking Authority is coming under well-deserved scrutiny for millions upon millions of dollars in lost revenue that should have gone to the Philadelphia school system....
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Is Philly In Denial About Its Jobs Problem?
Deep in the recent jobs report number doled out by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, is a glimpse of what the unemployment situation in Philadelphia looks like. And, it doesn’t look as good as...
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Reality Check: Will Water Bills Drown Philly’s Poor?
Perhaps one of the more publicly understated problems with Philly is that too many of its citizens are drowning in a vicious cycle of water debt. The Philadelphia Water Department has estimated that 40...
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