The Police-Facilitated Murder Of Rachel Hoffman

Just Another Dead Criminal

It was one of those literally unbelievable moments that seem to be happening with increasing frequency – a tax-eating public servant defending his culpability by deception, incompetence, and negligence for the bloody murder of a young female under his control essentially by implying ’she asked for it‘:

The Tallahassee police chief says Rachel was suspected of selling drugs and she was rightly treated as a criminal.

“That’s my job as a police chief to find these criminals in our community and take them off the street, to make the proper arrests,” Jones told 20/20.”

Rachel was in a drug court diversion program when she became an informant. Due to the manipulation of the chief of the Tallahassee PD, she is now a dead informant. Yet despite his manifest culpability for her death, here he is, on TV, defending his reprehensible action of putting this peaceful dope-smoker in the literal sights of two (allegedly, a term with which he disdains to describe the unconvicted Ms. Hoffman) known murdering animals;

“I’m calling her a criminal,” Tallahassee police chief Dennis Jones told 20/20, who maintains that both drug dealers and drug users are considered criminals to his department.

It was like watching a fictional crime drama, except this guy really is on the government payroll, saying this stuff like he believes it.

If Rachel Hoffman was a “criminal, then this guy is nothing but a murderer.

When Good Money Goes Bad

Just flipping through today’s local newspaper and noticed a disturbing trend of how gobs of unearned cash gravitating toward unaccountable entities attracts the criminals.

Questions surround grant in Clifton Heights

CLIFTON HEIGHTS – Residents and some council members questioned the transfer of $825,000 in grant money to the Clifton Heights Economic Corp., a nonprofit entity that council has no control over, at a recent council meeting.

“I don’t know how we authorized this corporation when we never got papers on this corporation,” said Councilman Mario Alpini. A listing for the corporation at nonprofit compendium Guidestar.org could not be found.

Police: Mother stole $74,000 from Avon Grove Little League

LONDON GROVE – State police arrested a Little League mom after she allegedly stole more than $70,000 raised through hot dog and candy sales, raffles and donations.

Fresh Start program raises questions in Yeadon

YEADON – Councilman Isaac Dotson received answers to questions he raised at the July 17 council meeting concerning Fresh Start Summer Camp, a popular new program serving 43 local teens under the direction of founder Leslie Lewis-McGirth.

Dotson specifically asked, “How many checks did the finance department issue on behalf of Fresh Start and how much money was spent to date?” And “who authorized Fresh Start employees to be placed on borough payroll?” Dotson also inquired about registration fees, employees, salaries and whether they’d received background checks. He also wanted to know if Lewis-McGirth used the borough’s tax-exempt number for grant applications, and “why the borough has not seen any funds, … cash or check?”

This is all from one weekend in one county. And last but certainly not least, the dead tree version of the same paper today reported on the executive director of National Night Out (a non-profit crime watch organization) is under fire for claiming  $300,000 in compensation from his $1.2 million budget most of which, as in the stories above, flows from us to him at the point of a gun. By the way, I’m also keeping an eye on the $500,000 check my own local youth club collected from the Commonwealth of PA to build a fieldhouse. The previously-privately-funded organization is quickly becoming a highly-protected fiefdom.

How Zimbabwe’s Inflation Relates To Our Own

Barbecued Rat - Coming To A Table Near You?

We are having a running argument among ourselves as to what, if anything, Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation has in common with our own inflation.

Three of us say it’s relevant, one of us (the smart one – the professor in the group) says it’s bullfeathers.

I disagree with him. Here’s why I think it relates.

1) “Inflation is, always and everywhere, a monetary phenomenon” – Milton Friedman

Friedman may have invented the hated witholding tax, and been an enthusiastic enabler of autocratic and totalitarian governments (as well as obfuscating the real causes of the Great Depression), but he was right on the money here – inflation is caused by central banks’ creation of money out of nothing, for no better reason than to fund wars that the people oppose and generate profits for the banks by impoverishing everyone else. In our two cases at hand, Zimbabwe and the US, both country’s inflations are fundamentally creations of their respective central banks for the purpose of funding wars, Mugabe’s war against his own people (the productive class), and Bush’s Wars also against brown Muslim people as WELL as his own people.

2) “Thanks to a weakening dollar, companies in the United States are selling more goods and services overseas…But the biggest U.S. export right now isn’t tractors or ball bearings or computer consulting or anything else American industry does. Our biggest export is inflation.” Jim Jubak, MSN Money

Our financial structure isn’t just busy printing money, it is also judiciously packaging government debt into securities that it sells all around the world to eager buyers. In other words, trade in goods and securities with China, et al, gets a lot of the funny money out of circulation here and into China before the excess can bid up prices too overtly. Zimbabwe, while once a food exporter, now has no goods to export, thanks to Mugabe’s “Land Reform”, which consisted of little more than killing or deporting the most productive farmers, most of whom happened to be white. Those farms are idle now, and Zimbabwe has nothing to export except its bad paper, which no one wants.

So, why is this bad? Sooner or later, sellers of goods stop accepting inflated currencies at face value, because they realize that the unit has lost value. This is a major contributing cause of the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973. Even more than our support of Israel, the OPEC nations turned against our money (as evidenced by oil prices that stayed well above the pre-crisis price even after the embargo was removed), the debasement of which Nixon had previously accelerated. It’s why first Iraq and then Iran formulated plans to open oil bourses trading in euros instead of dollars. Particularly important is when foreigners stop purchasing US government paper, or start shedding our paper. This hurts the economy.

3) “Please China, Sell Your Treasury Notes” – Felix Salmon

Even worse is if those same foreign buyers of paper start selling in a panic. In this case, the flow of money out would stop, or even reverse, causing massive spikes in prices due to this reversal. Foreigners currently hold approximately $2.6 TRILLION of US-dollar-denominated debt. How much of this paper would these other countries have to shed to cause massive inflationary destruction in the economy? As bad as Zimbabwe is, everyone who ever held Zimbabwean paper has long ago cut his losses.

4) “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others” – Groucho Marx

Inflation is effectively a stealth tax levied on the poor, the middle class, and the elderly by the government for the benefit of the armaments manufacturers, banks, and oil companies. Any amount of inflation does this, which means any amount of inflation is evil. Some governments are simply more evil than others.

As bad as that is, inflating into the teeth of a big recession could spell disaster. The system is so overleveraged, any significant loss of confidence in the dollar would trigger an unstoppable wave of rebound inflation that the Fed would be simply overwhelmed, an inflation that would utterly destroy the US economy. I hope I’m wrong.

FDA Misses Salmonella, Cripples Tomato Industry

Poison Fruit?

Incompetent government agency fails to perform its job ((YAWNNNN)) cripples an industry ($100 billion worth), and still cannot say with any certainty what exactly happened. Yet absolutely no one in the FDA was harmed.

Steps Toward A Voluntary Society

Fascinating, absolutely fascinating video by voluntarist Sam Dodson, who has the temerity to ask a judge a valid, legal question;

Try to restrain any impulse to think “this guy’s just dicking the court around”, and watch him ask fundamental questions about the charge against him, and the court’s proper role, and watch the officers of the court squirm under his polite, civil questioning.

We need many more like him;

For more entertaining legal viewing, watch Regent University Law professor James Duane demonstrate why you should never, ever talk to the police;

(Link to first video from Lew Rockwell’s blog; link to second video from skip at postal blowfish)

PA State Police Do Study; Think Tasers Would Be Fun

The PA State Police did an unscientific study and judged themselves to be worthy of tasers to keep the citizenry in line.

State police commissioner Jeffrey Miller (in file photo above) says his department studied the use of Tasers for two years before beginning a pilot program in 2006, which saw 18 troopers issued the non-lethal weapon.

Miller says that during the first six months of this year troopers have used their Tasers 144 times. He says there is no doubt that in some of those situations troopers would have had to use their batons or firearms to protect themselves or others.

So what would have been appropriate in the other 98% of those situations? Nothing? A stern voice? Turning the other cheek? How many involved traffic offenders simply being unfortunate enough to be pulled over by a cop with a chip on his shoulder? How many needed to be “taught a lesson” on how to respect authority?

Pope Benedict Shill for Enviro-Communists

From the AP:

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — The world’s natural resources are being squandered in the pursuit of “insatiable consumption,” Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday in a speech urging followers to care more for the environment and reconnect with the principle of peace.

Benedict, speaking to more than 200,000 pilgrims gathered for the Roman Catholic church’s youth festival, expanded on a theme that has led him to be dubbed “the green pope.” The crowd, massed on a disused wharf in Australia’s largest city, regularly erupted in cheers that gave the event the feel of a sporting event.

Gee, Mr Pope, never realized you were so plugged in to the science thing. You must have done a lot of research on this stuff.

Types of “poison” are afflicting the world’s social environment, he said, such as substance abuse, along with the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, for which he blamed television and the Internet.

Or could it be that you’re just “green” enough to use it as a vehicle to push your own agenda…just like everyone else?

Hot Chick Slams Turnpike Commission

I don’t watch much teevee these days but I set aside a small bit to watch Pike TV.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is perhaps the most notorius playground of nepotism, patronage and outright theft (except for maybe the PALCB) in the Commonwealth. And now it’s finally being exposed for the fraud that it is.

Obama Is No Better Than The Rest Of Them

We Should Have Known, Really

The US Senate just passed the immoral, illegal, unconstitutional FISA “Amendment” bill, which, if you haven’t been following along, includes retroactive immunity from civil prosecution for telecommunications companies that knowingly broke the law, allowing members of the Bush gang to basically route all communications through their systems directly to the NSA without warrant or legal sanction of any kind, an utter violation of the 4th Amendment as well as more than two centuries of settled law.

Throughout the process of the passage of this evil piece of filth through the Congressional colon, Democratic presidential candidate Barack H. Obama claimed he would filibuster the bill rather than accede to its passage, a feather in his cap, to our minds. But yesterday, as had been telegraphed for days prior, he turned around and voted for the immoral, lawless bill.

While not exactly Obama supporters, we had been holding out a slim reed of hope that maybe, just maybe, the charming Illinois politician would be marginally less bad than the evil, clueless John McCain. After all, he has been less strident than McCain on Iraq, and made approving noises about the recent bare 5-4 Supreme Court decision preserving a scrap of constitutional protection of habeus corpus. Even if the passage of the bill was “predetermined” as Russ Feingold said, he could have stood on the Senate floor and made a speech decrying the bill, even if he still felt like he had to vote for it. For an example, see Ron Paul’s record statement on the House bill.

But he didn’t. Obama is turning out to be a typical, immoral, evil liar

(Rollins Band video of “Liar” from YouTube, Venture Brothers video from Cartoon Network, Obama photo from some dumbass Republican’s blog)

Music: Personal Judas / Are We Brothers?

From the aptly-enough named Staten Island natives Happy Anarchy comes our first example of betrayal as muse; On “Personal Judas”, sounding alternately like Lloyd Cole, The Cult, and The Tubes, this wry, angry song had me pressing rewind to enjoy it’s crunchy late-70’s vibey goodness. Listen, and disregard the critic’s bias toward -archy;

“Cause you’re lonely, cause you’re poor

Cause they sent you off to war…

Dirty fingers ain’t gonna clean up this mess that we fell in
And you’ve got those stains smeared all over your face
Clean shirt. sucker
I ain’t the one so let’s go find another to pick up the pieces
You’ve lost your red letter, now don’t you feel better?
Cause we all need someone to blame”

Next up – Paper Rival’s “Are We Brothers?” has both lyrical and instrumental outrage aplenty, but counterpointed by sweet harmonies and again, That 70’s Vibe, go listen;

“Our bones in the earth
feathers in the urn
How did we separate ourselves?

The bones in the earth
feathers in the urn
Why did we separate ourselves like this?

Do we share the same blood?
Do we wear the same cloth?
Is it all getting lost?
Are we brothers or not?”

How High Can Oil Go, or Are We Prophets?

From a 2005 Mises blog discussion about the real economics of corn ethanol as a motor fuel;

“…The fact remains that the energy input deficit alone is enough to kill ethanol until gasoline reaches $8 – $9 per gallon, without subsidies. Until this occurs, it will not be economic to replace gasoline with ethanol on a national scale.”

Today, from an article on the Bush Administration’s imputed plans to “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”;

“Sinking or crippling a couple of the 50 supertankers as they pass each other every day in the strait (of Hormuz) would not be much of a challenge for Iranian gunners…ship-owners the world over would ban any attempt to navigate around the shipwrecks. A barrel of oil would quickly jump to $500 and gas would reach $12 a gallon…“

Dwayne Andreas, please call your office.

(links courtesy of the Mises and Lew Rockwell.com blogs)

PA Legislator Vitali Puts Guts On Back Burner, Supports Economic Fascism

I don’t often stick up for a politician but I had all the respect in the world for PA House member Greg Vitali when he exposed and fought in court the heinous Act 44 of 2005 which lavished pay raises on legislators and judges in the middle of the night.

But poor Greg, once a beacon of truth and justice in the eyes of taxpayers here in PA has finally caught his stride and has put political expediency before virtue.

Vitali, who sits on the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, has taken the mantle on environmental issues in the state House and has easily been the biggest proponent for legislation on climate change.

“Climate change is the most serious environmental problem facing the planet,” he said. “Right now, the state … is in the process of enacting measures which will result in greenhouse-gas reduction, but we’re not doing it in sort of a systematic fashion. We haven’t set goals and we’re not working toward pre-set goals in a planned-out fashion, and I think that’s what we’re trying to accomplish here, and that’s really what the bill is doing … This piece of legislation really provides a planning mechanism.”

The bill – the first of its kind to pass on the state level – will allow businesses and industries to track their emissions voluntarily through a registry, require an annual inventory of the sources and amounts of global-warming pollution from business, agriculture and residences, and create a 21-member stakeholder group to draft a report from that inventory for use by the Department of Environmental Protection and Legislature to develop a state plan on greenhouse-gas reduction.

Besides being a little late to the game (the religion of global warming is starting to implode), this is so wrong on so many levels. The most apparent stems from the overuse of the word “plan” reminiscent of the failed Soviet Union. The next is the word “voluntarily” as in “we voluntarily submit tax returns each year.” We all know what happen with voluntary programs. The scariest is the talk of the “21-member stakeholder group.” Something tells me I will never be invited to be part of this group. But like every other government-business partnership, the end result will be New Deal-type protectionism.

Please Tell Me The World’s "Leaders" Are Not Really This Stupid

On the upcoming G8 summit in Japan:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the G8 leaders would agree on steps to fight the soaring price of food and to guarantee supplies.

The steps will provide short-term relief to the crisis and a long-term strategy to increase world agricultural production.

Rising food prices have pushed 100 million people below the poverty line, the World Bank estimates, and have sparked street riots around the world.

I know it’s too early to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day but, “Arrr, shiver me timbers!” No one is even talking about how price supports for dumb initiatives such as biofuels are causing market distortions, raising food costs and dropping the world’s poorest people into starvation. I will go out on a limb here, though, and predict that the only “solution” they can up with is a more uniform scheme of economic fascism instead of simply disbanding the G8 which does nothing other than to guarantee that the world’s most economically influential countries inflate their money supplies at approximately the same rate.

Disney Pixar’s “WALL-E”; Breathtaking, Maddening

Disney Pixar's WALL-E

Gennady Stolyarov over on the Mises site blogs about the latest feat of filmmaking from Disney Pixar, “WALL-E”. He’s really up in arms about it due to it’s heavy-handed environmental and anti-capitalist messages, and I agree with him as far as it goes. But he misses the fundamentally anti-state, pro-freedom heart of the film.

The Bad
The film opens on a scene of literally unbelievable environmental devastation caused, we are left no doubt, by humans, particularly those patronizing and working for a giant mega-retailer “Buy N Large”, which actions have apparently filled the spaces in between city skyscrapers with stupendous piles of refuse. There is no life apparent here, and no movement at all except the busy movements of a small, solitary trash-compacting robot.

The scene is literally thousands of times worse than the direst man-made global warming predictions we have heard, which is to say the planet in camera, obviously Earth, has degraded so completely that there is not only no life, but no water and, as we see later, no weather of any kind save for periodic apocalyptic dust storms.

For the first third of the movie, the filmgoer is constantly bombarded with evidence of how the hubristically-operated WalTargCostCo proxy destroyed the earth, without any clue whatsoever about how such a thing could have got so much power as to not only evade existing environmental law (itself an abrogation of property rights), but the universal, longstanding moral repulsiveness of resource waste of such a magnitude. The filmmakers want us to believe that somehow, between now and the time that anthropogenic global warming manifests itself, mankind will suddenly abandon its native environmentalism and go off the deep end, prior to abandoning the planet entirely for B-N-L’s gigantic interstellar cruise ship.

The Good

Having condemned the message of the opening scenes, we are dumbstruck by the sheer visual majesty of the film. Earth might be a despoiled wasteland, but here Pixar renders it in magnificent, visually-stunning, realistic detail. When we are shown the blasted landscape and the terrifying dust storms, we can almost believe what we are seeing is real, quite a feat and another giant leap for Pixar, and digital filmmaking in general.

We observe the robot moving about the city performing his obviously programmed task, curiously selecting random discarded objects and saving them prior to gathering up, compacting, and stacking the surrounding dross into piles bigger than the biggest skyscrapers. The robot, WALL-E is seen later to be collecting not just objects at random, but useful spares, and, establishing that he possesses artificial intelligence, objects he values subjectively. One particularly pivotal object he finds, inside an old refrigerator, is a plant seedling of some kind, which he carefully excavates and preserves.

When a huge spaceship lands in WALL-E’s neighborhood, his curiosity overcomes his rudimentary sense of prudence and he observes the disembarking of a gleaming white levitating ovoid robot with intense interest. He is almost obliterated seconds later when the newcomer discharges its extremely powerful sidearm (Hooray Second Amendment!) upon observing movement at a distance it interprets as a threat. Several discharges later, WALL-E manages to convince the newcomer that he is no threat.

Subsequently, the two robots engage in what I would describe as a “testing – learning” interaction, where one engages in a symbolic movement or makes a sound, then waits for a response (anyone who has interacted with small children will immediately understand this). The testing and responses lead to each of them telling the other their name, the newcomer is called Eve, which WALL-E pronounces “Eve-a”.

WALL-E invites Eve to his home, which appears to be the immobile, rusted hulk of a much larger model of his type (apparently WALL-E has wired up the access door to some solar panels). When he shows her the plant, she immediately puts it in an inner storage compartment and shuts down, clearly she has been sent to earth for this purpose, since a green plant icon begins to grow on her smooth surface. WALL-E tries to communicate with the now-dormant newcomer, until her ship returns to pick her up. WALL-E hitches a ride, and we discover that Eve was indeed a probe, sent out by the B-N-L mega-cruiser to determine whether Earth is habitable again

Without giving the entire plot away, WALL-E and Eve, along with the titular captain of the mega-liner Axiom discover that something is amiss with the ostensible plan to recolonize the earth, and overcome their programming to do what is right, versus what is their “duty”.

The Maddening
The plot, particularly near the end of the film lurches wildly between heroic and ridiculous. The doughy, decalcified denizens of the Axiom are completely detached from reality, their relationships all virtual, their needs all attended to by specialized robots (one is left to wonder how the doughy, decalcified offspring depicted are produced). This is particularly maddening because the overwhelming tendency of humans whose economic needs are met is to seek more direct contact with others, not less. The captain, as indolent as the rest, has somehow not previously even had a little bit of curiousity about the Earth and the past.

Ultimately, however, it is a brilliant and satisfying film, with a fundamentally anti-state, pro-liberty message, and I recommend it highly, particularly younger ones (my 2 1/2 year old daughter and 4 year old son were enthralled the entire time, perfect angels). If you take a child over 5 years old, however, PLEASE discuss these points with them afterward!

Red Ink Superman, Indeed

(From 2004)

Several commentators have referred to Norman Podhoretz’ recent 30,000-word manifesto “WW IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win.” I have actually read the thing, and frankly, it’s scary. If you think the neverending carnage in Iraq is bad, just wait until we expand it into Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. Just the kind of fun new program to look forward to in a second Bush (or, frankly, a first Kerry) term.

This is the kind of delusional thinking you can afford to engage in when you are just a commentator, and you don’t have to deal with the real costs of neverending war for empire – the dead, maimed, missing, the orphaned, the dislocated, and the moral and financial ruin to the nation that is caused by wars waged for resources rather than self-defense. It’s almost as if those making policy for the Bush administration have been watching too much “Mad Max” and “The Road Warrior”.

Paul Craig Roberts observed;

Podhoretz begins by alleging that “the malignant force of radical Islamism” has as its objective “to conquer our land” and to destroy “everything good for which America stands.

If Muslims intend to conquer America, then they are every bit as delusional as Podhoretz, who intends for America to conquer the Middle East.

 Frankly, I think people like Podhoretz are the ones destroying “everything good for which America stands.”, by urging our vague Republican president into spilling even more blood and more red ink in more commercial wars.

Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices has written a song that didn’t make sense to me until now called “Red Ink Superman”, in which the penultimate lyric, shouted, is;

“We’ll even the score / In World War IV!”

Pollard clearly has read Podhoretz.

It’s clear to me that the score being “evened” here is with the Muslims of the Middle East for having the audacity to want to hold onto their own land and control their own destinies.

Given the unprecedented, immoral increase in Federal debt, and the destruction of the dollar wrought by The Decider-In Chief, it isn’t at all clear we will be able to do either one.

Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Inga Saffron of the Inky asks why some buildings are built “green” while others in the city of the equivalent of an “SUV.”

In one corner of Center City, a private developer has just completed the tallest green building in America, the Comcast Center. Three blocks east, the state is beginning work on an equally large building, the Convention Center expansion. Consider it the SUV of meeting halls.

I understand her frustration but this situation should illustrate something to those who would ask government to do good by them. If the PA Convention Center, the very definition of a government make-work project designed from the ground up to benefit no one but politicians and their union allies, is so completely out of touch with ecologic principles, why do people in search of what they term “sustainable development” look to the government to provide it?

Birthplace of Liberty Also Seat of Protectionism

There is a new law taking place that says that Philadelphia tour guides pass a test to ensure that they know history.

An unconstitutional law in the birthplace of the Constitution?

There is indeed, claim three tour guides who have taken issue with City Council’s attempt to ensure that they know their history.

The guides filed a federal lawsuit yesterday that seeks to knock down a new city tour-guide licensing law.

Brought with the backing of some tour operators, the suit argues that the law, which takes effect Oct. 13 and imposes fines of up to $300, violates tour guides’ First Amendment free-speech rights.

Part of me smells a protection racket while another suspects that the new law is to drive home a skewed history where political correctness takes center stage. By the way, on this Independence Day,  the order of the day around here is George Washington bashing.

Across Independence Mall on this Fourth of July, storytellers will entertain Philadelphia visitors with tales of the American colonists’ struggle for independence. Literally beneath their feet, though, an equally stirring story of another people’s quest for freedom waits to be told to a much wider audience.

It’s a disquieting narrative about how the first president quartered nine slaves in the nation’s first White House, a mansion at Sixth and Market Streets in the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Yet it’s also a saga of hope, telling how two of George Washington’s slaves escaped. Moreover, the seeds of the 20th-century’s civil rights struggle were planted nearby in a colonial-era settlement created by free African Americans.

The little-told chapter in United States history is being uncovered by archaeologists working near Independence Hall. Their legacy will be a fuller picture of the nation’s Founders. (That era was detailed this week in several Inquirer articles, now posted at go.philly.com/presidentshouse.)

Obama Pro-Slavery

Last time I checked, compulsory work for no pay was slavery.

His solution is to promise repeated calls for American sacrifice as president and, to put teeth behind that, he has proposed a major expansion of government national service programs, first unveiled in Iowa in December, that would cost $3.5 billion a year. His campaign said he would fund this effort with savings from ending the war in Iraq and by canceling a new tax break for multinational corporations.

This is already not sounding too benign. I can only imagine what it will morph into.

Taxpayer-Funded SEPTA Metro Competes Unfairly With For-Profit Newspapers

I remember it like it was yesterday. SEPTA came up with the idea to launch its own little newspaper. The Metro would be a benign little affair to be distributed only at SEPTA rail stations and bus terminals.

Designed to be read by a commuter during the length of his trip on public transportation, Metro is concise, easy-to-read and filled with lots of color. Today’s premier edition consisted of 23 pages of news, weather, jobs, money, sports and entertainment.

But flash forward 8 years and it seems that distribution has morphed and competes directly with every other Philly rag.

If there can ever be a predatory pricing scheme, this would be it. Not that a lot of people, younger ones in particular, would mind seeing dead-tree newspapers go away, but one cannot help think that SEPTA has a distinct and unfair advantage since the entire organization is a ward of the State and funded at gunpoint largely by taxpayers.