Northwest Notebook

Happy Fathers Day

2010-06-10T20:15:00.003-04:00

I'm three for three kids! As more people learn about the Pinter play known locally as the CHCA board of Directors, they back away, like passers-by viewing an epileptic seizure on a busy sidewalk. Metaphor mania!

Dysfunctional? Undisciplined? Ruthless? But effective, right? Guess again Bunky. Because my winning streak coincides with the boards' losing one. Not surprising, since they concern the same events.

Let's go to the video tape.

First up, the long awaited PA Attorney General's Report, finding the local zoo inmates in violation of state fund raising laws, fining them, and putting them an official watch list. All out of an investigation that I participated in, after which I badgered the other investigators to call in the sheriff. The CHCA wiggled and squirmed, but they got hooked anyway. Ballard Spahr's star Jeanne Hemphill couldn't fix it. Look out Lower Merion School District. B.S. is representing them too.

Next up, the Good Food Market. All I wanted there was a defeat of the CHCA and their "all business-all the time" attitude regarding the 'hood. The letter of support the board sent to the Zoning board, all the influence they thought they needed to produce, was not enough, as near neighbors, and the Chestnut Hill Residents Association actually showed up at the hearing, and defeated the one aspect of the GFM's business plan that they objected to, one that the CHCA could not concern itself with. Not pro-business, you see.
Crybabies that they are, they cried foul about the near neighbors being helped by some local pols, including Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, always a reasonably priced ally." Not fair " cried Greg Welch and others.

But Greggie and Walter and the rest of the Caucasian Talk Circle must have had a miraculous change of heart about such unfair tactics, because this time, concerning near neighbors v, Fresenius, a dialysis center,-like the GFM, a business on a residential street-the CHCA came loaded for bear. And holding a political Ace that they said was cheating when used by their opponents.
More than a half dozen board members showed up. And this time, they had a letter of support from the same D.R. Miller. President Walter Sullivan even came to lend his smoke machine prose to the applicants' cause. But this rare show of force outside the friendly confines of their clubhouse didn't mean shit.

The near neighbors presented their case, again a small objection concerning hours of operations, specifically the option to increase those hours in the future. The CHCA Laissez Faire Society couldn't be bothered with compromising with such business haters. The rubber stamp had already been inked up and used.

But they lost again. After hearing near neighbors, and from a Chestnut Hill Residents Association Member, the City Zoning Board made its decision. Leave the hours as is. Victory-Near Neighbors. Defeat CHCA-Again.

If that wasn't embarrassing enough to the CHCA, who came with a lawyer, Rob "Muscles" Remus, Bob "Young Republican" Rossman and others, dig this.

After a mouthpiece named Pincus-I'm talkin' like John Garfield here-tried to compare the proposed biz to the CVS-which is ON the Avenue, and got nowhere- he attempted to introduce President Foghorn Himself, the Voice of God, who would Save the Day for the Representatives of Hill Business and their fans-the dozen or so Hillers who haven't read the Wikipedia entry recounting all I have already told you about these clowns.

But poor Walter never got to speak. The Zoning Chairwoman stopped him before he wound up his seven day clock of ambulance chaser bullshit.

"I don't need to hear any more" she said, stopping Mister President in his torpid tracks.

There is no truth to the rumor that I had e-mailed her some of Walters' You Tube Marathon Soliloquies I have recorded for your amusement. The reason they always ask me if I have any recording devices on me when I come to meetings now.-Too bad- It's a public meeting, I can record it if I want to.

But I did call the near neighbors after the last, eye-opening-for-them-board meeting,and put them in touch with the Residents Association-for the support of an organization not in the pocket of anyone with something bright to dangle. Like a silver dollar.

Yeah, I worked behind the scenes again, as I have been doing for some time-Thwarting the Mediocrities at every turn, all in my spare time. Its really not hard.

Most of my advice boils down to a very simple bit of advice:
Just stand up to them. They have nothing on their side except the acquiescence of those whom they profess to represent.

But that's all changing-Isn't it?

Ed (Who's Your Daddy?)Feldman

2010-06-04T11:27:00.002-04:00

Making Converts, One at a Time.

If I had a nickel for every time I said, "If had a nickel...".
I got two more nickels in this weeks' Chestnut Hill Local. Or maybe I got 72 more nickels. Because every time someone attends Nurse Ratched's Thursday Evening Therapy Group, otherwise known as the Chestnut Hill Community Association Board of Directors Meeting for the first time, they realize that my little stories aren't figments of imagination.
The shell-shocked, following their inaugural exposure to the Hill's peculiar brand of Democracy, and a shower, often respond with" I didn't believe it 'til I saw it with my own eyes", when I ask them about their experience.
The latest group to have their eyes pried open, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange Therapy Session, wrote about it in the Local, one in a letter, and one in an Op-Ed piece.
They eloquently and specifically stated their objections to a single aspect of a new Hill business seeking a zoning variance .
Unlike the near neighbors in the Good Food Market case, these neighbors do not hide, or leave their objections open to interpretation by the opposition, although that has already happened.
Big Surprise.
The neighbors request:
That the business in question agree to keep their hours of operation, in the future, the same as on opening day, specifically 6 til 9 Mon-Wed-Fri and 6 til 6 Tue-Thurs-Sat
That's it-Nothing else.
The business wants the option to extend evening hours til 9 on Tues, Thurs, and Sat, in the future.
CHCA board members have characterized those who sought this compromise- this promise to keep present operating hours, future operating hours; as enemies of business, and of the sick, and of the indigent, as racist, and they voted to oppose any such compromise.
The African-Americans on the board did not accuse the near neighbors of racism.
There are no African-Americans on the board.
The business owners want their options open. Here's where it gets murky, as dealing with businesses often gets.
The hours of operation upon opening must be enough to satisfy their bottom line, or why wouldn't they push for those longer hour to start?
Yet they say the denial of the longer-hour option in the future would be a deal breaker.
My conclusion is this:
They always wanted the longer hours. They want them now. But they thought that opposition would be too strong if they tried for them at present.
So they thought it would be easier, and sound more reasonable to ask for the option, if in the future it became necessary.
Putting it in a little at a time has always been a successful application of will, I've used it myself.
It's a compromise with yourself, one you can always change, and always improve upon.
And it works with those easily convinced of your good intentions , like undergrads of yore in my case, or the CHCA board in the present circumstance.
Those who are still waiting for Snowden to rent something, anything, after he bought the board, will believe anything anyone with a bulge in his pocket tells them.
Later, when the bulge turns out to be something anatomical rather then monetary, they swallow bravely and move on, on their knees- to the next bulge, hoping for a different outcome.
CHCA president Walter Sullivan swallowed. He said the business would have to come back to the board if they wanted to increase the hours.
Can anyone guess how that meeting will go? Any different outcome than this last one?
Right-More Swallowing.
Will I show up at the Zoning Meeting?- Will I bring friends? Will the CHCA board get beat again, just like the whuppin' they took over the Good Food Market?
Will the only people who accept their authority be those on the board itself, and the business owners it now serves?
Fined, punished by the State, ignored by the eighty percent of the neighborhood who refuse to join, ridiculed and reviled by more and more-who all owe me a nickel apiece.
Keep your money-I'm having too much fun.

Ed (I've got friends downtown too) Feldman
Morning Feed- Gtownradio.com-Mon-Fri 9-10AM Eastern

_

Heard on the Avenue: Weaver's Way & Their Week-Old Food

2010-05-15T10:17:00.000-04:00

The Chestnut Hill location of Weaver's Way Co-Op is set to open today moving the opening of Monday, May 17th two days earlier. I think, and hope, it will be a much needed and appreciated addition to Germantown Avenue.

But be wary of their prepared foods.

According to one of the people who is preparing the prepared foods some items will be almost a week old when they open their doors. My source was making food on Monday, May 10th and was told it was for the opening of the store on May 17th. This person has worked in the food industry for 10 years and when they questioned the timeline those in charge shrugged it off with the explanation, "Oh it will be fine."

Now I have spent some time in and around food and most things are discarded after 5 days. I confirmed this at a restaurant a friend owns (Tavern on the Hill) and also at Top of the Hill Market. Selling food a week after it's made is a huge mistake. Understand that the fact they are now opening today is a good thing, as their meatballs are fresher than they would be on Monday, but if you take any home: eat now or forever hold your stomach.

Some Folks Never Learn-Because They're Stupid

2010-04-24T12:27:00.004-04:00

It's been awhile, but it's time once again to remind everyone how corrupt the Chestnut hill Community association is, and, without the helpful editing of the Local, what lengths its president Walter Sullivan will go to in order to retain the only position, of what he mistakenly believes is power, that he has ever "achieved".

In his last editorial in the Local, a privilege he subjects us to so very often, Editor Pete lets Walt bullshit his way through another extolling of a group that can't get a quarter of the people in its' neighborhood to join.

It can't get enough people to have a competitive election. Eight board spots, eight folks who want to fill them, but Walt still calls it an election. And he says the Hill has never been apathetic.

But he still finds space, and Pete lets him, to blame three people for all the Associations' problems. Okay, maybe four people.

Yes, those "few letter writers" who seek to undermine "your" CHCA.
Tell me Walt, how did I stop eighty percent of hill residents to avoid your small time power tripping circle jerk like the plague?

How did I, an admitted socialist, convince the Republican Attorney General of the state to fine your organization, even with Jeanne "the fixer" Hemphill all but dragging her dead father into meetings trying to make the biggest embarrassment ever brought to Avalon-on-the-Mount go away?

The top gun from Ballard Spahr couldn't fix it. She travels the country, getting corporate killers off scott-free and she couldn't quash this investigation.

To anyone with an ounce of knowledge concerning her culture, the conclusion is obvious.

If this was the best she could do, then the real findings were so much worse, that the efforts of a less connected defender of your coven would have resulted in a CHCA version of Jennifer Zogas' Grocery Empire. No more CHCA, no more fund, jail time for some, and of course some outraged letter blaming me.

Go ahead Walt, blame me, and Ron, and Jim. It's good for my ego. If I can get no one to join "your" CHCA, as you seem compelled, or commanded, to call it, to make eighty percent of the Hill not give a shit, imagine how powerful I am. I'm goin' after the IMF next, the bastids.

Maybe I can get people to continue to avoid "your" CHCA some more by telling them, again, that Richard Snowden, who has leased land his family owns in West Virginia to Massey Energy, whose criminal safety record has now resulted in deaths of dozens of miners, now controls "your" board.

Look it up, sheep. This is your new leader. He hasn't rented a single building, like he promised. But he is complicit in West Virginia Mining Disasters. Makes you feel all warm inside, don't it? When you feel like that in Mingo County, where his other business is , it's Black Lung Disease.

He scammed "your" board into paying for a rental consultant to train someone else so you could then pay that person to rent any of his properties that he feels like losing the tax write-offs for. Hold you breath. The "trainer" has worked for Richie before. She's gonna get more for the training than the person doing the outreach. Couldn't you just find an already trained outreach person? Not Richies' idea, you see.

"Your" CHCA is all waiting for Opie-hair to save you. To eat his table scraps, the menopausal petulant child that vomited racist signs all over "your" avenue when he didn't get his way, is given committee chairs, any variances he wants, while the Jenks principal thanks him for plowing a parking lot he had to plow anyway, and for letting art hang in his derelict buildings, making them seem less derelict without paying a cent.

He's "your" savior, and it's only costing you what, thirty-five thousand dollars?

The reason he got to take over, is that my doing too? Or is it because the exit of so many long time board members, some who were implicated in the investigation, like Stewart Graham, or others who got tired of being ashamed, created a power vacuum that Coal-boy entered, with help from his employees and renters. Richies' non-tax dollars at work.

Anyone examining Richards' past actions knows that, without his wealth, and "your" fear, someone of his psych profile would be sitting in a day-room waiting for pudding and meds.

Yes, this is "your" CHCA. Now run for his benefit. Everything else is gravy. Walts' self worth. His wife's embarrassing place at the table. Those patiently waiting for something to fall off of Richies' plate. Some resume building for the hungry young ones, formerly idealistic, who no longer speak to me.

That's okay, wide eyed successors to Jeremy and Tia. There's no afterlife, you can relax about the soul thing. Money and promotions and Ambien and Zoloft can solve everything else.

As my great-grandfather Tevye said, in a musical about his family, "There is no other Hand"

If you can't get twenty percent of the people in your neighborhood to join "your" CHCA, and you couldn't get twenty percent of those who did join to vote in the last election, when there WERE more candidates then board openings, just who DO you represent? Who is the "your" you keep modifying CHCA with?

A four-percent "non-apathetic" electorate. Nice "discovery" councilor, no wonder this is your only gig.

Did I do all this to you, you dumb fucks? Or did you do it to yourselves? Dumb fucks usually don't need help screwing themselves, that is why they are called dumb fucks. They can't even figure out how fucking works.

No, I'll go with the former. I did this to you. Feldman the all-powerful. I have told the truth without fear, and the people, apparent from their actions, and the State, apparent from theirs, believed me. And I did it, as iIhave told you before, all in my spare time.

Tune into Morning Feed, 9-10 AM Eastern on Gtownradio.com for more. Even though "your" CHCA is mentioned in only one show out of twenty, Mr. Good Food Market still found time to refer to me as a "Roxborough Radio jock" in singling me out as his adversary. I like the sound of that, it makes me sound tough.

Since I made the people not shop at your market dude, so can I please get a letter to that effect so I can show my advertisers what kind of power I have?

Ed (King of all overpriced Grocery Stores on non-commercial side streets opened in a depressed neighborhhood in the middle of the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression by someone who had never done this before) Feldman

Next Time -A Really Great Jeanne Hemphill Story

word on the street: another store closing

2010-03-27T14:39:00.004-04:00

With all the troubles Good Food Market has had in the last six months (and probably even longer, I just hadn't noticed) I was happy to read in the most recent issue of the Chestnut Hill Local that their problems with L & I were solved within twenty-four hours of proper applications. This makes the news I was just told a little harder to swallow.

Word on the street:

The Good Food Market will be closing their doors forever at the end of the month. At the end of what month? I am assuming April since March's end is so close and no mention was made of this in the Local article last week. Sources also said that some kind of 50% off sale would come next.

Since no official announcement has been made, the person who told me said their spouse discovered the market's closing on his own, I cannot swear that there is any truth at all to this rumor. I will say that the source is reliable: a long-time local business owner and CHBA member.

The Local article also mentioned that their most recent set of trouble with L & I were caused by anonymous complainants, who are still unknown. I say that complaints without a face should not be acknowledged. Everyone has a right to face their accuser! Who knows?... it could end up being love at first spite.

A Night of a Thousand Scars

2010-03-27T11:53:00.003-04:00

I'd like to thank the Academy.

Triumph is not too strong a word to use, regarding the outcome of the Pennsylvania Attorney Generals' investigation into that group of naughty children known as the Chestnut Hill Community Association Board of Directors.
The board will spin the "violations" (the AGs' words) alleged and the fines levied, as a slap on the wrist.
I couldn't agree more.
A slap is what this crowd deserves. Or maybe a spanking.

I have watched as the board committed fraud, paid off friends, whited-out incriminating documents, rigged elections and destroyed the ballots, and, when found out, gaveled down those who produced the proof at meetings-me- and threatened to call the police for the dangerous act of....asking embarrassing questions at public meetings. They have threatened me with police five different times. I haven't seen any yet. I'm waiting.

Their threats started when I pointed out their violations at meetings five years ago. But when I got elected to the board, along with some other reformers, we formed an oversight committee, chartered by the board for a three year term. Two lawyers and a former bank executive were on the committee. They did the hard work, and I played the trumpet and wrote about it.

When we reached our conclusions, we presented our findings to the board, but it was too late.
Some of the folks who had broken board rules, and state laws, had fled, but others had run for the board again and gained back the majority.

It was to this, new-old-dirty board, that the oversight committee presented its findings, and recommended remedies. Like give back the money used in violation of the state grant, and most importantly, have a forensic audit to find out where all the money actually went. And find out what kind of legal entity the board was. It had no idea. It raised hundreds of thousands and wasn't registered with the state, therefore avoiding official scrutiny.

The new board responded by rejecting every finding, and disbanding the oversight committee, more than a year before its term was up.

I told my associates that it was time for US to call the cops. They were more reasonable, and thought the board would be too. The found a donor to pay for the audit, as the board, with more than a million dollars in the bank, was pleading poverty. The board rejected the offer.
I said call the cops.

Pleas were made. The board was given every chance to reform, or at least find out what had happened. Nothing.
We called the cops.
We got the PA Attorney General to investigate. We gave them our report. I gave testimony. I curled their hair.
Now the report is out, and it turns out that we were right. The CHCA owes fines, and has to start keeping minutes of Trustees meetings, which it has previously avoided, and finally register their activities with the State. And they will be, from this moment forward, watched. I don't have to do it anymore, because the State will. It's all in the report.

I went to the board meeting on March 25, 2010 to finally read the AG's report which would be discussed and to have my fun.
Can anyone guess what happened?

Their spin has already begun. But more telling than the "official story' are the actions of the players themselves.
That the AGs' report would be a subject of the meeting was well known.

Imagine my surprise when less than half of the board members showed up, barely a quorum.
The long tables, for board members only, were set in their customary square configuration, an interior design metaphor used to marginalize the public at a public meeting.

But something was different this time. The table at the "head' of this arrangement, had always been filled with the officers of the board, all whispering to each other during meetings regarding how to deal with, well- me usually. Remember-direct questions?
This ten person table, was now empty. Only Walter Sullivan, President of the board, sat there.

All his friends avoided the meeting. The board has a rule you see, or more accurately, the absence of a rule, about directors attending meetings. They never have to attend meetings. Never.
The ones that came, literally, kept their distance.

It looked like The Last Supper,but with all the Apostles out at the Pool Hall, trying to divide the thirty pieces between them. Walter should be pissed at them, not me.

Those who would have been most embarrassed by the report chose to attend to other matters, including one the masterminds of so many of the offenses, Dina Hitchcock.

But I was there.

First, a presentation from a Green Initiative group, about making Chestnut Hill environmentally responsible, during which I never mentioned that the largest developer of Hill commercial real estate, Richard Snowden, derives his operating capital from the leasing of West Virginia land for the strip mining of coal. Richard, board member, not having any pet projects waiting for the rubber stamp from a board he now controls, was not present. I didn't mention him.
See, I was on my Best Behavior.

Then the four and a half page Compliance document was distributed, and time was given for it to be read. The person giving them out refused my request for one, but another board member gave me hers. I don't know her name, but I thank her.

Jeanne Hemphill, Head trustee for the Chestnut Hill Fund, in charge of over a million dollars in contributions, joined Walter. I didn't see any other Trustees. including Bill McGuckin, who once almost had a stroke over my behavior.
I guess criminals don't return to the scene of the crime. Unless they have to put a lovely pink bow on a smoking gun.
Jeanne tried her best. After all, one her specialties, listed on the website of her law firm, Ballard-Spahr, is the defense of corporations and organizations involved in government investigations.

She claimed that some of the issues raised in the investigation had come as surprises to her, and to the accountants that the board had hired, halfway through the Oversight Committees' investigation, to try and clean up a fiscal mess created by a board that felt it proper to conduct audits every OTHER year.

I can vouch for the accountants' surprise, but not Jeannes'. When the head of the Oversight committee told those accountants about some of the things we had found, they were surprised too. The board hadn't told them everything, you see.

Jeanne finished her presentation. She did not seem comfortable explaining all this in public. She had, before her explanation, recommended that the issue be discussed in executive session, excluding the public (me), and repeating the rationale for secrecy, even after President Walter repeated that the discussion should proceed in public. I had to tell her to stop, that the ruling had been made.

The president opened the floor for questions. The board was silent, except for two minor and forgettable questions.

Frankly, most of the board members present were ill equipped to ask anything. Most of the guilty ones were elsewhere. Those who were present remained silent.

After Walter asked three times if any board member had anything to add, he just had to open the floor to the public.

I was the only taker.

He warned me that I must confine myself only to issues contained in the document at hand. Remember, this is a public meeting, in a democracy, and Walter even claims to be a democrat.

I agreed, cause I live for moments like these.

SO I sez to her I sez: Jeanne, you cannot claim surprise about anything contained in this document. Everything the Attorney General alleges, everything they have discovered, was first discovered by the Oversight Committee, and told to you in this room, at these meetings over and over. You were given the chance to do something about it and clean it up yourself. You refused. You disbanded the Committee instead. You brought these sanctions, and these fines on yourself, through your denials and refusal to self enforce.

At that point a lot of things happened at once. Walters' gavel started striking at ramming speed cadence. Jeanne started re-explaining her "ignorance defense".

And Tolis Vardakis, past president of the CHCA, involved in much of the cover up, made a motion with his hand. I followed the direction of his gaze and found its subject.

It was Rob Remus, board member, real estate agent, who has in the past; told employees at the Chestnut Hill Local newspaper, owned by the CHCA, how to do their job, without the benefit of any experience in that vocation, used homophobic hate speech towards a Local employee, who was then fired as a result of the incident, threatened a lawsuit against the CHCA, that he volunteers on ,for defamation, and received a four figure settlement from the organization for not bringing the suit.

Rob is large, stupid, and a coward. But because of the first two attributes, Tolis apparently thought that he could be used as "muscle" against the latest dangerous attempt by your humble narrator to commit freedom of speech in public. Rob turned to me and told me to be quiet.

I responded by refusing , adding that if he laid on a hand on me, I would put him in the hospital. I have been waiting for these tough guys to try and be tough with me for six years. They're all talk.

The woman next to him, Countess de Peroxide-Wedgewood I believe, became the latest in the long and distinguished line of board members to brandish her cel phone at me with that tired police threat. I told her the number, and told her I would wait for them, and her explanation to them for the call, and the resulting laughter. She's new, she didn't know I'd seen this play before.

She left the room, either to make the call and be laughed at in private, or to make believe she was making the call. We'll never know.

Things calmed down. Jeanne explained some more. Walter said one of the allegations was "piddling" and he would love to fight it in court. But he also urged that the board sign the Compliance agreement and pay the fines, so I guess he doesn't really want to fight it in court.

The motion to sign and pay the fines was passed, unanimously, save for one vote. No one said anything else about the matter.

Except for me.

After everyone was ready, in the words used by the perpetrators of so many lies, crimes, misdemeanors, cover ups, to "Move On", I had one last comment to the silent, sullen, room.

"GUILTY AS CHARGED" And then I left

I saw Lady of the Plates in the lobby and I told her I would wait as long as I could for the police to arrive, but as the business in the meeting that concerned me had concluded, that time was finite.

Actually, had the police arrived, I, as the first one to see them, in the lobby, had intended to tell them that The Duchess had exposed her genitals at the meeting and that was the reason for their summoning. I waited as long as I could. I guess the Flash Mobs are a police priority.

Too bad. I had tweeted the Mobs to come to the meeting. I wanted them to see how the white people committed crimes. Nothing like learning from the Pros.

The entire AG report will be linked to as soon as I get someone to do it.

Thanks to the PA AG, and to the Oversight Committee. They did all the work-I had all the fun.

They never did call the cops on me, because they had no case and no guts. We did call the cops because we had both. And now I have an ending to my book.

I want to share this Award with my Agent, my Manager and my Lifemate. Don't buy fur , and please spay or neuter the CHCA board of Directors. Oh, I guess I took care of that last one already.

Ed(Best Actor in a Leading Role) Feldman

Meeting Tonight

2010-02-17T12:44:00.003-05:00

There will be a meeting tonight at the Hill House to discuss the future of Germantown Ave. Here is the information from the invite that was e-mailed around:

PLEASE, DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER

A discussion of Chestnut Hill Politics, Culture & the future of the Avenue.

Peter Mazzacaro (editor of the Chestnut Hill Local)

Annie Hart (motivational speaker and author of op-ed "Retail Consultand Can't Change Hill Culture)

Wednesday, Feb 17th
5:30pm @ the Hill House Lobby
201 West Evergreen Ave

RSVP: chriss@connaughtinc.com

Two Plugs are Better Than One

2010-01-22T10:20:00.007-05:00

I have missed reading new and exciting posts. It's been over a month so I figured I would start the ball rolling.

Just got done making a debut on G-Town Radio on Ed Feldman's show. I gotta say: Classy, classy act. I will be back on the air soon if Ed will have me.

I was on the show for the same two reasons I am writing this now. I am plugging two things.

The first is the release of my Live in Chestnut Hill album recorded last September as part of Chestnut Hill's Beatle-Mania weekend.

Now that that is out of the way it's time for the important stuff.

The second is a benefit for my wife's medical bills. It is tomorrow nite at the Venetian Club in the third floor ballroom. Food is being donated by Drake's Gourmet Foods, Tavern on the Hill, Campbell's Place, Bacchus Market & Paul Roller. Beer is free! And there will music, music, music. Member's of Roger Learnard's Dodge City Junkies, Melissa Martin, Jim Fogerty, Jason Fifield, myself and other will be jamming out to each other.

Tickets are $35 in advance and $40 at the door. There will also be a silent auction with great items including tickets to a Broadway show, an oil painting by local artist Christine Donahower, items from Hideaway Music, Boccelli's, and more that I haven't been told about. Tickets and donations can be made at Artisans on the Ave or by PayPal using the address Clairegolden@yahoo.com

Not Hard to Figure

2009-12-02T15:12:00.002-05:00

You would think that it would get harder to come up with an angle on The News, what with eleventy thousand Networks and Websites, or maybe its just that I haven't been able to find the explanation for President Barrys' Afghanistan Surge-o-Rama anywhere that satisfies my particular World View. Or maybe I haven't looked hard enough.

Or maybe it's because my riff is not based on a World View, but on the nature of ambition, a motive based on that ambition, and the secret that every Politician tries to keep from the Electorate.

That secret is that they are politicians. Not Public servants, or Statesmen/women, or Defenders of the Flame. They're Politicians. It's the only lawful profession, other than stripper, that will never be admitted to by those who practice it.

Strippers always refer to themselves as dancers. But even they won't use stripper as an epithet when referring to their enemies. Yet when politicians want to insult the opposition, what do they call them? Politicians. What do they accuse them of "playing"? Politics. They insult them by calling them politicians, which is what they are, what they both are. They ask for your vote by claiming not to be "carreer politicians. "

This all explains the higher poll numbers for strippers than for politicians.

Now that I have revealed the real profession of our president, let us remember what a politicians' first job is. It is to get elected. Or re-elected. Before the policies and the State Dinners, and the Dog and the Helicopter, comes the election and the strategy for its' success.

Barrys' team has shown an aptitude for election success in the past. It was its' reason for being. Why should its' motive change now? That includes A-Stan.

Can you present a plausible alternative? Let's try.

1. Nation Building in Afghanistan. A pile of rock, ruled in increments of a few thousand square miles for millennia by tribes with no history for building any cohesive organizations other than the ones used to repel outside invaders. Barry knows this history as well as I. That can't be it.

2. Resource Plunder. (See Halliburton/Iraq.) No Oil in A-Stan- just Poppies for Heroin, and we say we want to eradicate that. And the CIA already established the pipeline from Southeast Asia thirty years ago, their reward from Viet Nam. (And Barry said their were no similarities.) Hashish? Afghanny was great, but Europe smokes it all up and none of it has gotten over here for twenty years, take it from one who knows. So that can't be it.
PS: I Love Amsterdam!

3. Oh the terrorism- the 9-11 thing. That smoking gun of a twenty second film of some guys on monkey bars, reputed to be shot in Afghanistan. Because to make a bomb, and to plan an attack, you need to all be in the same country at the same time so you can be caught more easily. And be good on the monkey bars.

Like those guys who planned 9-11 in Ramada Inns and Titty Bars and over the Internet and on cel phones from Germany and Palm Beach. The guys we now get to kill on grainy TV by unmanned drones controlled by Art of War Grads from another part of Florida.

Or the guys arrested in hotel rooms by European Interpol types who all cooperate with each other and the CIA to trace them 21st century style, with technology and paid informants. The agents of governments who don't want to help us "on the ground" in you-know-where. Terrorists are criminals and criminals are caught be clever police, not by Armies.
Who was the last terrorist caught by a tank? So that's not it either.

4. That we give a shit about broke ass Third Worlders who, without our help, would fall under the tyranical rule of woman hating fundimentalist power freaks.
See Somalia, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and Mississippi. Check.

Afghanistan will get back to being exactly what it was going to be before we got there, right after we leave. We all know that and we don't care.

Just like we, with the Medias' help, have already forgotten about Iraq. Remember Iraq? Do people still get blown up over there on their way to the store? Is the Government stable? Do Sunnis and Shia still control their own neighborhoods and towns and provinces and no one goes into the "other place" without getting killed?
Remember when it was important to care about that shit? It was just six months ago.

Now that it's not on the Front Page, we don't .

Barry knows all this too. I always give politicians the benefit of the doubt regarding their grasp of the situation. It makes them look so much worse when they feed us some other line of horseshit.

He knows that as soon as we leave Afghanistan and replace its' space on the Front Page with something else, all is forgotten. We just replaced Iraq with Afghanistan, just like Cheyney replaced Afghanistan with Iraq seven years ago.

So why don't we leave now? And why is the withdrawal date July, 2011? Think hard, you'll get it. Think about what Barry does for a living.

On a wall, in a room we never see, is a Pie Chart with Three Slices. One Slice is labeled, "The people who will never vote for you, no matter what you do." The folks who made the Chart never mention this Slice

Another Slice is labeled" People who will always vote for you, no matter what you do " They never discuss this slice either.

And then there's the Slice in the Middle.That one is labled,"The Slice you need Fifty-One Percent of."

Millions of dollars go to pay people and to create slogans and ads and tactics and lies to get that Fifty-One.
The calculations have been made. That Fifty-One Percent of the Middle, it has been determined, can be persuaded by the Republicans that if Barry pulls out now, he will be a Chardonnay Drinkin' Frenchified Coward of Kerry-like proportions, and not fit to be at the helm of a big powerful country with the job of protecting us and leading the Free World, blah, blah, blah.

It's bullshit as old as the Hills, but there are people who still believe it. They believe Infomercials too.

So Barry will get on his Horse and ride the Range, for Two Years. The Generals will be told to keep casualties to a minimum, and Barry will greet the returning Soldiers.

Then, in July 2011, he will announce Great Advances in whatever Standards of Success his people have already figured they could achieve, and then leave.

Afghanistan will return to what it was, and we'll forget about it, because the Media will stop covering it. Their attention will turn Elsewhere. To what, you may ask? Thanks for asking. I will tell you.

The Summer of 2011 is when the 2012 Presidential Campaign begins. Fresh from declared success in Afghanistan, and fresh from an economy which will have recovered enough for us to forget how really good it used to be, Barry beats Mitt, or some hillbilly.

And you thought that speech was about a military campaign. Military campaign are militarys' job. Getting elected is Barrys' job. And he's good at it. I don't dislike him because I expected this.

The real idiots are the Michael Moores of the Left who didn't see this coming and now feel betrayed. But they'll all vote for Barry come 2012. Who they gonna get? Somebody cooler? Clooney already has a better job. Somebody whiter? Then they're racists. Somebody blacker? Then they'll lose. Barry was their perfect candidate. They could be hip, tolerant, and safe, all at the same time. Barry figured all this too.

Their childish naivete is the reason they'll never be in power. It's not a game for children.
When the Real Left grows some balls and spits in the eyes of those who call them Stalin, then they'll win, get Single Payer, and re-establish a 50% bracket for those who fucked our economy, took the bonuses and hid the money offshore. Barry don't play that. He played you.

Until then, they'll put their faith in Centrist, Corporate, angle-players like Barry, Bill, and Hill, and then feel used. Poor Babies. No revolution for you Michael, you backed a Politician.

Oh Well, I Guess I'll Write about Her Too-by Ed( No,it's not about you, Richard) Feldman

2009-11-18T15:43:00.005-05:00

I feel dirty writing this, and not in a good way. But since everyone else seems to have already written about her, and since it's so easy, and since I haven't read the thoughts that I will share with you now (although I wouldn't be surprised if they had been written already), I guess, well, here goes. But my heart isn't in it. But I won't mention Her Name, and that will make me feel less like a Bandwagoneer.

Yes, Her, why is she popular at all? Is it because she's everything that Obama is not? She is that. She's a woman, she's white, she speaks without thinking, she lives without thinking, and she works the media like Carrie Prejean works her..... See, I told you that my heart wasn't in it. I didn't even try to come up with an amusing euphemism for clitoris.

To compare the Divine One with Miss "Jesus says my implants are okay-and so are my fingers and this zuchini" is already a tired metaphor. They both are famous for the way people get famous these days, which is confusing to those who remember the old way.

Not for excellence, but for getting on the fame merry-go-round through a series of embarassing failures, then not succumbing to the natural inclination to hide in the rec room til everyone forgets, but rather figuring out ways of not falling off. That is a talent in itself, albeit one that is practiced, for a shorter time periods, by the Fulbright Candidates who reveal their man-tits on the Jerry Springer Show.

So to get minutes over your fifteen, the outrageous ways one must continue to present oneself in order to keep the cameras from finding other subjects, may just reveal a Savant-ish talent in our Gemini-like former beauty queens.

Because if either of them suddenly started acting reasonable; if Miss California Pussy Fingers suddenly went on a Church Mission to teach less advantaged Third World Women to be proficient in activities that would keep their hands occupied during the extended periods of time the male villagers were out hunting game (and keep her away from the TMZ Paps), or if the Rogueish One were to lock herself away in a room and begin to read all those books and newspapers she once claimed knowledge of, long enough to emerge with the ability to anwer a question involving a fact, well then, where would the entertainment value be in that?

No, our culture has had it with fame having anything to do with excellence or achievement or hard work. We like our celebrities to be train wrecks. It's so much more interesting, you know, ugly but you can't turn away. We like 'em big and stupid. Better for our self esteem too.

Look on the positive side. The fact that clown shows like these occupy our news time signals a return to pre-911 America, when it was all about OJ, Oval Office BJ's and Shark Attacks. Remember? We all had money then.

Even the attacks on Obama for bowing, or not bowing, or being a Commie, or a Nazi, have the elements of farce that we haven't experienced since a they tried to impeach that guy because of a dry cleaning issue.

Until someone takes a shot at him, of course. Anybody got the over-under on that one?

Fame is some weird shit. And staying famous is so much easier when you don't have to waste valuable time practicing a talent or craft or reading and studying. Then all you have to do is to work on staying famous.

Paris Hilton is more famous than any Hollywood Actress, and the only skill I've seen her demonstrate would only rate a B+ on my scale. Tilt your head back Hon, you'll be able to go deeper.

It may be against the law to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater, but it sure gets everyone to notice you. Just ask me.

But there is a substantive similarity between the Killa from Wasilla and Miss Born-Again-Porn-Again.

They occupy a position vital to the continued self delusion that is a cornerstone of the ethos of "social conservatives". The reason for that name is because the Media that coined it did not want to alienate potential customers by calling them what I do.

White Trash. Bohunks. Munyaks. Sky Jockeys. Renaissance Deniers. The folks who think the End is Near because the Democrats and Jews and Queers and Niggers have all gotten together to loose the plagues of Sodom on the Greatest Country the Giant White Man who lives in the Sky ever Created.

All the Evils of Society have been created by the Liberalism that made beating your kids illegal and all the other Commie-Based Nanny-State interferences that killed John Wayne and replaced him with Ryan Seacrest.

Yet all the while they Lament the moral slide to Perdition that they assume started with Alan Alda, this same John Hagy-watching demographic; squeezes out bastard children by the carload, produces all of our nations' methamphetimine, supplies every single actress in Porn (have you ever listened to them talk?-They ain't from the Upper West Side) and takes care of those in need of help in the States they control with the indifference that would drown them in the Tears of Their Savior, if He existed.

Denial is Mothers Milk to these Good People. Without it, they would have to admit what us Godless Liberals take for granted. That what you call Sin is fun, that we like it and it won't doom us. That it predates you belief system, and only became a problem when some power trippers needed a reason to market that system to help them get a handle on controlling some of your ancestors, the gullible of yore, and make a few bucks.

It worked, just like Ring-Around-the-Collar started getting people to pay for extra for Wisk, a powdered detergent mixed with the magic ingredient of water.

It takes someone with Balls of Iron to sell nonsense like that. It takes someone who can deny the truth when everyone can see it on the JumboTron.

It takes the kind of person who can accuse Her opponents of moral laxity while Her knocked-up, unmarried, teenage daughter stands right behind her.

It takes someone who vetted her future son-in-law with the same diligence as She was and now blames him for making a living, just as She is, off the national Joke you both played on all of us. At least he didn't use a body double for his cash-in. I know, writing the book yourself would have taken away important "twitter-time".

It takes someone with "social conservative" version of Denial that the Neo-Cons use when extolling that fact that there hasn't been an attack since, uh, you know, uh, 2001.
Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the Play?

The best defense is more of everything that got you famous already. Meaning is meaningless when the lights are all on you. Work it Girl!

Lil' Eddie

More wacky stuff like this on Morning Feed-Monday thru Friday on Gtownradio.com-on your Computer Machine

King of all .........

2009-11-14T09:09:00.002-05:00

I hope you're all listening to my Innertube Radio program on Gtownradio.com
Morning Feed, only two weeks old, is already causing a stir. A prominent Philadelphia weekly newspaper is doing an article about me, and the program, and all my other interests.

I have begun to have guests come on the air and that is going quite well. Perhaps some prominent Hillers would be interested in joining me.

For the first time since his demise, I have thought of Tom Fleming. I think he would have
considered a guest shot on Morning Feed. It would have appealed to his playful side. I think he would have enjoyed himself and we would have had an interesting time discussing both non-controversial topics.... and the other kind. We could have discussed his racing career.

I once promised Tom that I would piss on his grave. He got a kick out of that. I spent a little time trying to find his present whereabouts in order to fulfill my pledge, without success, but, as time passes, so does my promise. Tom was wrong about a lot of things, but I'm gonna give him a pass. His most virulent attacks against me were so sudden and random, in between periods of affability, that I'm gonna chalk them up to the confusion and the sense of powerlessness that comes from the inability to master situations, both physical and intellectual, that he once could dominate.

I am often asked, "Why Chestnut Hill?". The easy answer is, write what you know. The secondary one-journalist division-is, outsiders can act as surrogates for an previously uninformed general public.

Fish out of water viewpoints are easy. Ignorant optimism, followed by discovery, recognition, disgust, conflict, and resolution by the outsider author mirrors the journey his heretofore innocent reader takes.

But a sense of microcosmic recognition is also important in works such as this one. For, as I tell Hill Tales to folks who have no prior knowledge of the place, they respond in two ways.

They are incredulous that the sort of culture, based on Apartheid- racial, moral,and political-exists within a Liberal, Multicultural, Northern City.

They wonder how a handful, many from outside the neighborhood, and from outside the City, have taken control, without protest from an informed, local populous.

Some, without any economic incentives, are the most virulent in administering power over a neighborhood in which they do not live, or earn.

And then there's Snowden. In a country where Global Warming and its' causes are an accepted concept to all save the most ridiculous Palinistas, the Hill's most powerful citizen, and the known perpetrator of offenses locally, owes his fortune to the most damaging, Earth destroying, workerer ravaging industrial process ever devised.

When I tell the uninitiated of Snowdens' involvment in Strip Mining, and show them the statistics of coal disease and poverty in Mingo County West Virginia, where his operations lie, then show them his vacant Hill properties, his tax scams, and his racist, blackmailing signs on the sweet Avenue that he now controls through the election of his tenants, employees, friends and lackeys, these intelligent people shit in their pants.

In other communities this guy would be exposed, shunned, shut out, picketed. In the Hill, his possible arrival at functions is as anticipated and hoped for as a shaft of pure light emanating from Gods' Own Penis, piercing through the Clouds of Despair.

But through the incredulity of my rapt listeners and readers, is the sense of recognition that they have heard this all before, writ larger in the socio-economics practiced in Washington and elsewhere. Some people are for sale, and all it takes is a guy with a checkbook and a boner for them to ask, "which hole?"

So, a cloistered subculture, like the Sopranos or the Mormons, coupled with the dance of money, pressure, and privilage buying off the greedy, threatened, and socially disadvantaged, is a mix of mystery and familiarity that is highly entertaining.

I once asked Dottie Sheffield, amateur horticulturalist and recipient of Snowden Largesse, why she defended him so. She gave the mantra so often heard," He has done such wonderful restorations!" (Actually just a couple). I asked her if she had ever ridden on the Autobahn in Germany. I assumed the answer, just as I assumed the actual ethnic orgin of her familiy's last name.
"Yes I have, and it's wonderful" she replied.
"It was built by Hitler, you know", I reponded.
"Well, good for Hitler", said Dottie.
"Thanks Dottie, I'll quote you on that" I replied.
And now I have. It didn't happen in some basement in Posse Comitatus Country, or a clandestine cross burning, but right here in Chestnut Hill.

The stories that happen right under your nose are the ones that must be told-by you.

Ed (I'll be giving out Richards' address and phone number on the Air- if my lawyer says it's OK) Feldman

I Pity the Fool

2009-11-06T11:40:00.003-05:00

Poor Greg Welsh. Poor Chestnut Hill Business Association. And Poor CHCA board. After years of throwing their weight around, pistol whipping their perceived enemies into submission, they finally have adversaries with enough pull and nerve and support to bitch slap them into their first defeat since we stopped them from firing Pete Mazzacarro.

As I have reported so often, you don't need much to beat this bunch, just a little nerve , and sometimes a lawyer. And in a response from Greg that anyone could have forseen, he cried "foul."

"It's a shame that the process that's been in place in Chestnut Hill for years.....has been usurped."

That's right Greg, because your Process, of Real Estate Insiders and Business Owners who have made the Hill into the Bank Ridden Mausoleum that it is, that fall all over themselves to get at the Teats of Snowden, only to find them barren and then ask for seconds, then attack the Local as "negative" for having the temerity to report that John Capoferri, one of their own inner circle, is a felon who cheated his friends and the Hill businesses out of hundreds of thousands, is crumbling.

Your Process allows all of this to happen, then tries to silence those who report it.

Your Process serves only those involved in its perpetuation for their personal enrichment.

Your Process ignores the Near Neighbors.

Your process ignores Democracy.

Now Democracy kicks your ass and you cry foul.

Your use of the word "usurp" is so "Hilly" I wonder if if it's actually on loan from one of your ethnic betters.

It was so much easier when all you had to do was get some Tool to shout "point of order" at a meeting when someone objected to your Process.

It was so much easier when all you had to do was send a thug to the Local to frighten the Help

Now you have a Rival. The Chestnut Hill Residents Association. They can play your game and Win. They have Allies and Pull and Connections. And Lawyers.

It won on Zoga, and now people are seeking its help in the Chestnut Hill College fight, rather than the CHCA's. That big sign you see coming into view reads " CHCA=IRRELEVANT"

Snowden picking you as his Front man was a Mistake. You're not Hilly enough. The Jew part doesn't help.

Walter Sullivan is seen as a Buffoon, and his wife as an embarrassment of Colossal Proportion.

The CHCA has always done its dirty work behind closed doors.

But now, with you and Kristina, two very un-Hill like personalities as its public face, more and more formerly disinterested people are beginning to become repelled. Kind of like with me only different.

I once wrote that your personality was a type of which I was quite familiar. The pride in the ability to lie with a straight face. The egotistical combination of sly street kid and and savy businessman, the Sharpie, the Tony Curtis character in "Sweet Smell of Success," always able to fool the "straights."

But now you're getting squeezed from two ends. Snowden is your JJ Hunsecker, the Burt Lancaster character from that film. He can buy and sell you, sees you as his tool and you both know it. You think you can play him, but with the differences in your respective holdings, whatever you can get from him is beneath his notice, and therefore your victory over the Shagetz negates any meaningful kvelling.

And your act is just too Showy for the Protestants. And as for trying to fight the Democratic Machine; well, be my guest.

The kicker is this. Greg, I think you're dirty. And all this attention is gonna bring an awful lot of light to bear on your other operations, in all your other pies, in all the other neighborhoods in which you operate. Remember bragging about it all to me before you started lying to me about your connection to Snowden and we stopped talking?

Two years before Cappoferri went down, I exposed him. He was a Snowden lackey too. He's gonna get the big Nickel, at least.

Chip Butler, same thing; A.) Snowden Bitch, B.) Feldman exposure, C.) Jailbird

The Moyl can't save you. I'm on the case.

Anyway, come on my Gtownradio.com program, 9-10 AM, Mon-Fri and we'll be like Jack Benny and Fred Allen. Feuds are good for ratings. You can even sponsor the show. Any pub is good pub. And the station is right down from Takers. Remember? I know you do.

Ed (Morning Feed) Feldman

PS.- Join the Chestnut Hill Residents Association. Don't Worry, I'm not in it and I don't come to meetings.

On the Air ....

2009-11-04T11:59:00.004-05:00

ED FELDMAN IS ON THE AIR... NO. HE'S ON THE INTERNET!

Gtownradio.com Monday through Friday from 9:00 to 10:00 AM

Yes, kids-I now have a daily platform from which to expose all that I see as evil and hilarious and corrupt and stupid and obvious. Can you all guess who and what I'm talking about?

Monday thru Friday from 9:00 to 10:00 AM, Ed Feldman, Furniture Guy, College Teacher, Writer, and Scourge of Idiots and Assholes Everywhere, will be heard over computers, I-Phones and other modern-day electronic Pacifiers on Gtownradio.com.

Now all the World can listen as I talk of Chestnut Hill and its cast of Wacky Characters. Richard, Dina, Greg, Walter and his Humunculus will be prominently displayed to the ears of everyone around the entire World with an internet connection. I'm gonna make you people famouser than ever.

Though links to my Furniture Guy Website, You-tube and Facebook, as well as my network of fans around the Globe, the Hill will be as well known as Lake Woebegone, or Mayberry, or Auchwitz.

Of course the Hill will be just one subject for examination during my program, which delves into all my areas of expertise and opinion. Many Hillers may enjoy and even understand some of these other topics.

Truth be told, the Hill story will have to be unfolded gradually to those listeners unfamiliar with our shared history.

But once everyone been been brought up to speed, the fun will begin.

To those of you who are prepared to lament, let paint a rosy picture.

My intention is to help Hill businesses and the Hill itself by publicizing their unique qualities.

Imagine new visitors to your establishments, asking questions like, "Is this where that Richard Snowden put up his Signs? He makes his money off Coal Mining in West Virginia and spends it on ...What?"

Or "Is this the office where Peggy Hendry took credit for giving a Black Man a vacation day on Martin Luther Kings' Birthday?"

Or "This is the Bank with the twenty foot photograph of a Restricted Country Club, right?"

I am trying to help here. I may develop a Feldman-Style Tour of the Hill, like they do in North Jersey for the Sopranos. It could help.

And serving Democracy is all part of it. Now, when I get wind of the latest CHCA scheme, I can announce it on my radio show, and when I tell people to come to the board meeting, who knows how many will show and from how far?

Now to all those who think this will be one-sided, think again. I personally extend invitations to all those who I have mentioned, and to any others who feel the need to represent the Hill in any way to come on the program with me. The discussion will be cordial, the questions pointed, and the room small. So if you have the time, and the courage of what you probably still call your convictions, go to the Gtownradio.com website and I will schedule a day for you.

Wednesday will probably be reserved for local news, after the papers have gone to press.

So Richard, call your Lawyers, it looks as if they now have a new assignment, listening to me every day. Walter, you can daydream about hitting me over a new medium. Greg, I'll be doing restaurant reviews.

The show is called Morning Feed. Gtownradio.com Monday thru Friday 9-10 AM, I play music too!

I'll start posting the flyers soon. Then I'll take pictures of who rips them down.

I told you I was in this for the long haul.

Ed (talk about your Morning Zoo) Feldman

Changes to Parking Rules and a Request to the Parking Foundation

2009-11-03T10:56:00.004-05:00

Since watching my car float away during Hurricane Katrina my wife and I had become hardcore supporters of public transportation. While she worked up in North Wales the 94 and the 134 got her to and from with limited issue (okay, there was the time the bus made the wrong turn on 309 and went 20 miles in the wrong direction getting her home at midnight instead of 7 pm as they had to wait for an escort to help them get back on track). We became fans of Philly CarShare until they eliminated the "no charge" limited use monthly plan. Then we moved to 19119 and I learned to despise the 23. Five times an hour is a big fat lie.

In recent months it didn't matter if I got to the bus stop at 8:45am or 8:10am. I would be waiting until almost 9am for my ride to work. Growing tired of this I looked at my options and got a scooter. A moped. A little 50cc device that would send me up and down the Avenue at speeds that sometimes could reach 45mph. One of the nicest parts about this is that it is legally considered a bicycle. I could park on sidewalk (as long as I was in line with the buildings) and didn't have to fear ticket or towing.

This all changed last week. I exit a business I had purchased a few things at to discover a parking ticket on my ride. $76?! Jeez. I check with the parking "code" and it states that I shouldn't have had any trouble or tickets with my vehicle. I speak to the PPA (oh what wonderful people) and they inform me that the laws have changed, but no tickets were to be written until Nov 4th 2009.

Scooters will no longer be permitted to park on sidewalks in Philadelphia (NYC just began these regulations as well) and must be limited to the designated Scooter/Motorcycle parking spaces alloted by the city. The representative of the Philadelphia Parking Authority I spoke with yesterday informed me that parking a scooter in car spaces could, in some instances, result in a ticket - and fines would be higher for bikes at an expired car parking meter than an expired scooter/motorbike meter. She suggested I use the scooter parking lots on Market Street until I informed her I was looking to park in the Chestnut Hill section (there are already scooter spaces in Mt. Airy).

So I ask the Parking Foundation to please add these spots. There are 11 registered scooter owners in 19118 and more in 19119 and 19038 (we have quite an online community and know about each other). We are already considered progressive as our vehicles cause less pollution, get better gas mileage (I get 90 miles per gallon) and descrease traffic congestion. We just need a place to park.

Avenue of Broken Dreams

2009-10-05T15:05:00.006-04:00

by Ed (Broadway Baby) Feldman

Fall at its' most iridescent. Some things change, while some stay the same. The foliage falls (don't say it) into the first category, with an anti-Al Gore chill making trees run up their yellow surrender flags. The Hill Fall for the Arts Festival falls into the latter, with a sameness so comforting to the Culturally Frozen and so stifling for anyone with a functioning memory of so many identical events.

But amidst the relentless sameness of the usual suspects' third rate trinkets and Kettle-Corn-Funnel-Cake-Carbo-Quaaludes, how many noticed that rarity of rarities, a New Hill Commercial Tenant?

Yes, in the old Express property, the shop girl's synthetic uniform supply company, now dwells a much more flamboyant purveyor of reasonably priced apparel.

Halloween Adventure, where all the Hillers with secret Super Hero and Fantasy Fetishes can now shop and, later, don their alter ego outfits in private. After the economics lesson, I'll start to match the local celebs with their costumes for Halloween, or Whatever. And you kids can all join in too!

Halloween Adventure is a store whose annual existence begins a few weeks before its eponymous Holiday, and ends, at the latest, after New Years, the better to supply Santa and Sexy Elf costumes during that time of year when the number of drunken revels increases the amount of casual sex with provocatively dressed co-workers and acquaintances by a factor of nine.

The store then vacates its location until the following September, with rare exceptions, like neighborhoods with high numbers of budget-minded tranvestites, with tastes for shoddy Chinese Exports. (That Rarest of Demographics).

Most every H. A. functions as Commercial-Squatter, Rent-Paying Bottom Feeders, who scavenge temporarily in vacant properties that have no hope of a viable, long term tenant.

Keep your eyes open kids. Where have you seen H.A.'s? Half vacant Strip Malls, places where the Plant Shut Down, near where the guys stand and wait for someone to pick them up for yard work.

H.A.'s aren't signs that the Buzzards are circling, they ARE the buzzards.

Remember L'il Richie Snowden's Signs? The ones that advertised his vacant proprties as available for "Check Cashing, Discount Electronics, and Nail Salons? He meant those signs as a Racist Scare Tactic to punish the Hill for its' non-fealty to his Authority, its' questioning of his Grand Plans, and its' occasional criticism of his Middle Aged Tantrums and Tax Schemes.

But even I didn't think he meant to rent to tenants who would, in his words, "turn Chestnut Hill into a Ghetto." After all, why would His Whiteness live in the most pigmentally-challenged neighborhood in Philadelphia if he wanted to hear car radios blaring something with a bass line?

But even without any real attempt at rental eugenics by Strip Mine Dick, the first line has just been crossed.

All those years of his self-enforced vacancies, of renting to banks but not restaurants, of antique and gimcrack stores that depended on visitors for survival, while commodities for residents were bought elsewhere.

The Panic by the weak Hill Biz crowd that followed Dirty-Coal Boy to board autonomy should have told you something. If they weren't desparate, their real opinions of him would have kept them home, and busy behind their counters. Now you can see the daily, physical manifestation in all its Dracula-like Horror: Halloween Adventure = Depressed Area.

All the Kettle Korn in the World won't help.

'Til next time, send in your suggestions for Costume Selection for Your Favorite Hillers. I'll have mine.

And More Fall Festival Follies with Ed, Rob Remus, Sanjiv Jain, the Hillers who Shun. Like the Amish but with Cable.

Job Search/What Might Have Been

2009-09-29T13:20:00.003-04:00

PART ONE

Hey kids, I just read Foghorn Sullivan's latest vomit-on -the -page in the Local, about riding his scooter to the U.N. if it had been built in Andorra, a bet on par with his wife being able to ride his Presidency to any job involving interaction with Humans.

I would have sold my mother to Hamas to see Walter trying to putt-putt his two hundred and eighty five pounds of horseshit up Bells Mills Road. Hey Walter, dream big, if you can repeal Newtons' Laws, maybe you can get Kristina out of the house.

We must all be thankful for the U.N. opting for the East Side. For if Walter had ever brought the Beast with him to hear the General Assembly, she might have replicated what the board let her spew at the meeting last week. And we'd now be living in a post-World War III landscape of styrofoam and cockroaches, which means Kristina would still be alive.

I also loved his congratulating Chestnut Grill/Snowden Bitch Greg Welsh's failure at getting a Civil War Museum built locally, another safe bet. Its' patrons would have fit the Demographic of the Regular Hill Shopper perfectly, both groups having been dead for twenty five years.

Is Greg sliding you some free Made-in-Omaha Mozzerella sticks for free, at least? Maybe he could hire Kristina as a Maitre D'esse for his Applebees'-on -the -Avenue. It would be like when Rickles worked the lounge at the Sahara, only with less charm, and more hair.

I like helping the Handicapped as much as the next guy (unless the next guy lives in the Hill), but Pete's place in Heaven is already assured for having put up with Asshole Brigade for so long. He doesn't have to lobby further by letting Walters' seepage use up valuable wood pulp.

PART TWO

I have found another reason that Walter was so simpatico with settling the Rob Remus non-lawsuit. It seems Walter is experienced in collecting money from his neighbors in this manner. He sued the Venetian Club and collected a generous five figure settlement. I'll get the exact dollar amount and the details soon.

Walter, that was your last chance-a new life with your winnings, the flat, tropical terrain of the Gulf Coast or Sunny Scottsdale for your Scooter, and an escape from the relentless shrieking.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

The settlement would have been your condo down payment. And then the Social security would have kicked in. You could have chased a few ambulances. Down there, there's one going by every few seconds. Old folks would have hired you off your voice and physical stature alone. Your expertise wouldn't even have mattered. You could have fooled everyone.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

In those climes, you could have started over. Your Manner and that Voice would have made you an Exotique-Sexy Widows, Jewesses, Southern Belles, would have fallen under the spell of your melifluous tones. Spring Training Games, Early Bird Specials, the Moonlight. Easy Pickins', my Friend

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

Now you're stuck in the Stenton Cell Block with someone so embarrassing that the people who put you on the Throne want the ground to open up and swallow her every time she pries herself out of the chair to speak.

Even Tolis Vardakis, one of the most reliable tools of the CHCA Power Freak Coalition, called "Point of Order" at her, and he's on her side. It was the first time the Ex-Puppet ever did that to an Ally.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been gone.

My Guess is that someone has already spoken to you about Her. But it won't help. She's Unstoppable. I guess the folks who wrote about my antics in the Local will be Publicly Silent on this matter.

You had your Chance, Walter. It's too late for you now. But I can help. You can take it out on me. I enjoy it.

She would have awakened one day and you would have been Gone.

A Yom Kippur Statement and Prayer

2009-09-28T10:25:00.005-04:00

As spokesman for the Chosen People, I hereby disavow any affiliation, any shared values, any mutual heritage, any common blood or DNA, with the shrieking lump of anthropomorphic tissue known as Kristina Sullivan.

The reason for this statement is threefold. The first is obvious. Any linkage between the aforementioned Creature brings shame on all of us.

Globally, each time the Thing speaks, the Earths' rotation is altered slightly by so many bodies, all over the Planet, spinning in so many graves, that the counter-gyroscopic effect cannot be mitigated for hours. This can only exacerbate the Climate Change Crisis.

More personally, by this statement I hope to guarantee that, if Political winds change, and the Cattle Cars return for us, there is no chance that I would ever have to experience the horror of sharing life in a Concentration Camp with the aforementioned Beast. That would make my stay unendurable.

Please God, let those who wish harm on us not witness her, for if they do, it shall surely bring us misery and pain. Amen.

Jewstradamus Nails Another One

2009-09-28T08:55:00.003-04:00

The repeated dull thump. The unremitting pain, that could be stopped, if only the attempt were made to confront the offense. If only those who might do so, would do so. But the compact of silence is so strongly inbred that breaking it would deny the strength of the tradition that made us what we are.

We discuss the issues of the world in the abstract, and so many of us come down on the side of justice, of the common good. But when confronted with it in our lives, under circumstances that we could address and rectify, we fall silent. This inaction explains everything; multiplied by millions, it creates the world we lament, but that we create, by the inaction of our own lives.
We speak out against the evil on pages, in newspapers, but when we have the opportunity to look into its' eyes and say "no", we shrink.

"What can we do?" We hear it every day. A letter to the President? A shout from the rooftop? "I'm only one person."

Some buy a Prius to combat global warming. Some contribute to the ACLU to support the first Amendment.

But the triumph of greed, of arrogance, of disregard for human rights and human life must be met every time you see it, only then do we have a chance.

That is why I do what I do. It might just be one twig in the wheel of evils' progress, but what if were a branch? What if you helped? What would you lose? And what would you gain?
If you knew that the Government was trying to tell your Newspaper what to write, and who it could print, what would you think? If Cheyney had hung around the Washington Post, instead of the CIA, and exerted his influence there, what would you think? More importantly, what would you do?

What could you do? You couldn't do much, after all, you're here, and they're there. But what if you could walk in on your way home from shopping and, without confronting security or even taking an elevator, give support?

What if you could stroll into the Senate and confront someone who was doing wrong, and stop them? What if you had the right to?

What if you knew where the person who sells land for strip mining lived? What if you knew where that man went on the third Thursday of every month? What if you knew where he would be , what he owned, and what he was trying to use his money for?

What if you could tell him what you think of him to his face?

On September first, on these pages, I wrote that those "reasonable" people who voted for Rob Remus' payment for a threatened lawsuit against the Local had not thought their actions out. They had told me they did it to put the past behind them. I told them that it would only make things worse.

Those same people were on the losing side of a CHCA board vote to put Rob on the CHCA Budget and Finnance Committee, that oversees the Local's budget. The reasonable people spoke out against his appointment, stating the obvious, that anyone who had tried to obtain money from the Local under such circumstances would not be a proper steward for its' future finances.
These people were naive, and were played by the board. Their sense of fair play was a detriment in confrontations with those who do not share their values. They have been taught in the abstract by others who have no experience with the types of people they now confront.

I told them that they blew it when they gave Rob the money. Their "reasonableness," their desire to make a new beginning for the board was interpreted as nothing more or less than weakness, and as license by those who wish to do what we have now all seen them do.

It took three weeks to prove my theory. Their "new beginning" will bring about the end.
The only time that they were stopped is when thirty people in the audience refused to let them fire the editor of the Local. They never tried that again. Their tactics have changed, and I have predicted each one. Starve the Local, and deprive them of any staff that might write anything they don't want you to know about. Then all that would be left to print is what they are fed by those who have created a newspaper of, by, and for the CHCA board and businesses that now control the board.

A partnership of Richard Snowden, small time Hill businesses, and the leftover old, lonely board members have done this.

But they were helped by those who, while telling me they thought Rob Remus and Dina Hitchcock were psychopaths, voted to give him money.

What kind of people give money to psychopaths? And what kind of people confront wrong when they see it when they share a room with it? And what kind of people do nothing?

The Howling

2009-09-27T21:22:00.011-04:00

"Shoot me if I ever go to another CHCA meeting!" I told my wife. This was last Thursday, after the opening of the Fall/Winter Board Follies for 2009--10, held, strangely, at St. Paul's instead of in the Library.

I hadn't gone for awhile, but I'd heard Hitchcock and her goons were tightening the noose on the Local further by nominating Mark Keintz and Rob Remus to the Budget and Finance Committee. These guys made up the Ad Hoc Committee (along with Hitchcock) from last year, that pushed for Jimmy Pack's firing; pushed for Pete Mazzaccaro's firing; cut Sonia Leounes's ad sales commissions in half, and after Keintz had abruptly resigned as Treasurer, installed David Mansfield to replace him.

Mansfield, a fiscal conservative who swept in with the Positively Chestnut Hill gang last Spring, is a partner to out-of-his-depth associate publisher Larry Hochberger, in radically altering fiscal mechanics at the CHCA. They've decided to cut $200,000 out of the Local's budget, and to facilitate the bleeding, got Keintzy to shove off. Now they've brought him back by appointing him to Budget and Finance, along with Remus, whom they've similarly rewarded for being a good soldier by paying him $3500 for not suing them last winter -- though his attorney hadn't moved to do so! And, I guess, for hanging in through all the sturm und drang.

Anyway, when I got to the Library, where most meetings happen, it was dark. A bunch of people were milling around, slapping at mosquitos and cursing in the moist weather.

"Didja see [Walter] Sullivan?" demanded one guy I didn't recognize. "He forgot to notify the Library Manager that we were coming, so she locked up and went home!"

"Yeah", said his friend. "So then Foghorn wanted to hold the meeting right there on the steps!"

"Thinking all the time!" said the first guy.

Finally somebody said he had a key to St. Paul's, so we hump over there. And the Board began its usual obfuscations. Hours of sliding around on zoning matters left over from the 8/27 meeting, followed by stalling on former President Ron Recko's questions on why Mansfield, Hochberger and Hitchcock seemed so set on forcing the Local to pay rent for its office space, and repay a loan from the Trustees the Local incurred in 2006, during Recko's presidency, for a three-month printing bill that was in arrears.

"How was it that Jean Hemphill 'forgave' $180,000 for Maxine Dornemann [during her administration, 2005-6] , but nothing can be done for the paper during these tough times?" Recko wondered.

At which point a weird howling began from one side of St. Paul's . It was Christine Sullivan, Walter's wife, who despite the humidity, seemed strangely furry and werewolfian: "OOooohhh!" she howled, dragging it out and pointing a long finger at Recko. "I haven't forgotten yoouuuh! We'll get to youuuh !! But FIRST I wanna know what's going on with Mr. Hochberger, here! It's put-up or shut-up time for yoouuhh, buddy! What happened to all your grand pllaaanns and proomisses?? OoohWOOooh!"

Recko tried to get things back on track, but was overwhelmed by Mrs. Sullivan's Whhoooing! He bolted for the door. Former president Tolis Vardakis, who'd been trying to interrupt Recko's line of questioning on debt relief, yelling "Point of order!", now turned to Mrs. Sullivan, but was howled down, too. "RRrrWhooor!!" she snarled, adding some pointed sharps to her flats, that sounded really dangerous. People started rushing the exits . . . I'd seen the battles over Lombardi, Sturdivant and Mishak, I remember the Walsh surgery unpleasantness, the 2008 election thefts . . . but this lycanthropy seemed beyond the pale . . . I headed for my Chevy, too.

"Never again!" I told my long-suffering wife, after I'd locked the door.

"At least next time, go armed," she said dryly.

-- Charlie Partana

overheard on the ave...

2009-09-25T10:06:00.003-04:00

from one of the charming volunteers at the bird in hand:

i see someone approved strapping garbage to lamp posts along the avenue.

gotta love those ladies. i didn't know what she was talking about until i went and looked. i wouldn't call it garbage as much as i would call it flammable.

An Error Occured...

2009-09-24T16:25:00.001-04:00

Note to Jeremiade.

Hit the wrong key when saving comments and two of yours were deleted. Sorry.

High Anxiety

2009-09-17T21:28:00.009-04:00

Open Note to Walter Sullivan

Since I've been banned from corresponding with the Local in any form, I'm replying here, on home turf, to your current opinion piece in that paper.

We haven't yet reached the point in the U.S. where strongly-held opinions need to be phrased like legal torts to prevent their being described as raising the question of "malice".

In the instance you cite, I was characterizing a much rougher description, reported and alleged to me, which I took care not to repeat literally, precisely because I wanted to avoid malice, and slander.

When we reach that point where journalists all have to write like lawyers, I expect you'll call a special session of the Exec Committee, & break out the whiskey and firecrackers.

Until then, I'm sticking with the First Amendment.

John Lombardi

High Anxiety

2009-09-08T13:14:00.003-04:00

Notes on Shtick
by John Lombardi

Since Fast Eddie Feldman has seen fit to advise Jim Foster and myself on how to write our columns, I figured I'd return the favor, a little belatedly. That's because he's begun operating like a northern snakehead now, filing practically all the posts on the blog, answering most of the comments too, circling back on his own instructions about avoiding national politics and pop culture and so on, instead of sticking to the crucial backstage news of CHCA goofiness that he finally admits the Local isn't providing . . .

For you non-fishermen out there, snakeheads are awful fish from Southeast Asia that somehow got into Florida waterways and ate all the other fish out of their streams, then wriggled into more streams -- crossing land to do it, and sometimes dying in the attempt! -- just because they were frenzy-eaters, like running blues. Hogs, really, "chozzers" I'm told it's pronounced in Yiddish, though FEF may correct me as a mere goy who has no business using Jewish idiom . . .

In all candor I should report that I paid for Eddie's roundtrip air-ticket from Berkeley last winter, when I thought there was still a chance to fight the Exec Committee's slow strangulation of the Local. The remnants of the old Lawrence Walsh/Ron Recko gang were all worked up about the Jimmy Pack firing and the move to get rid of the Local's "Editor" -- even though I kept writing that he'd copped out shortly after heroically criticizing the Spring 2008 election. I thought Ed might juice him up again if he was around, yelling and sweating in the old Jerry Rubin/Ira Einhorn (pre-murder conviction) mode. It didn't work out that way.

There was a strong movement involving the most conservative folks in the CHCA, the CHBA, and, it developed as the winter slogged into pre-election spring, a concerted effort by Richard Snowden to unify the "pro-business", anti-journalism crowd -- who'd felt since my day (in 2000-1), that any sort of imaginative reporting should be shunned the way the sparrow shuns the hawk -- "negative" writing, all that blood, barking dogs, yechhh . . .

The provincialism of Chestnut Hill still amazes me sometimes. The sheer old-fashioned pettiness, love of gossip, religiosity -- though nearly all the old ladies whom I called "the Lloydettes" are gone now: Marie Jones, Helen Moak, Nancy Hubby and Mary Anna Ross (Cowper I believe she was called, in the end?) . . . blaming the ills of the Hill on rabble like me, Fast Eddie, Recko -- ethnics coming in and trying to change the old White Mischief colonial traditions of pointlessly long board meetings, Local Management meetings (as they were then called), and all the other uncoordinated groups treading on each others' toes, changing regimes annually, so that no courses of action were sustainable -- dense numbers of dysfunctional suburbanites with unhappy home lives barking at each other for three and four hours at a shot, then heading for Campbell's to slosh some beer and bourbon over the whole mess and keep on trucking . . .

Market forces are what undid the Hill, people. The Germantown Avenue Bridge repair, which lasted for years, changing Montgomery County shopping patterns by interrupting old commuter habits of visiting the "Village" between the Top of the Hill and the flower market near the Mt. Airy line, for cheese, hardware, shoe repair, antiques, fine prints, dry cleaning, haircuts, Caruso's, lovely, 19th century strolls . . . Given the Malling of America & Philly taxes, real estate rental along the Avenue grew too steep for realistic profit-making, and psuedo-businessmen like Snowden, Sanjiv Jain and Rob Remus screwed things up further, leaving empty storefronts (for tax writeoffs) that are beginning to resemble the Yosemite Gold Rush ghost-towns of the Sierra Nevada. And there is racial liebesraum--pushing from Germantown proper and the North Philly ghetto, too, which some Hillers are too hypocritical to talk about . . .

But what saddens me is the journalistic waste. The Hill and surrounding communities are full of smart readers with taste and vision who aren't members of, say, Carolyn Hausserman's former cast-iron committees, or the CHCA at all. No one's addressing them. They're not listening to foolishness like the Local's happy reports about how swell everything is; or Fast Eddie's baroque shtick on Snowden's "master plan" to force everyone else out of the picture so that he can build condos in the Hill parking lots, or start soft coal strip-mining operations in Pastorius Park.

The Hill's ideal readers know that Snowden, for one, is no real threat. He's just a rich dilletante. What corporation would employ a guy who buys buildings as tax writeoffs on a permanent basis? What's the profit margin there, bro? But Ed knits & purls this conspiracy stuff -- adapted from Lloyd Wells's old obsessions, by the way -- like a vaudeville trouper. His themes are Snowden -- about whom he hopes to write a book, without, apparently, doing any real research (if he'd just read the old Inky series on S's Germantown misadventures before he even got to the Hill, FEF would realize how futile a project that is, saleswise) ; race -- though he always leaves crime out; and character assassination -- he was recently sadistic on Len Lear and Walter Sullivan, just because he thinks they're vulnerable. And smarmy sex -- to prove, I guess, what a naughty boy he is: here's what he had to say about Rob Remus in "Curiouser & Curiouser" in this space, August 30:

"So Rob, who once told a gay man that he wanted to insert a body part into his body [sic], now offers, then denies, access to his children to me for some reason. He dangled his kids in front of me for a reason I can't even imagine."

Sure you can, FEF. It's just sick shtick.

Live on Tape This Weekend...

2009-09-07T17:00:00.005-04:00

This unabashed promo brought to you by Waylaid Pilgrim on behalf of Rev. Chris.

It's Beatles Night this Saturday. The Reverend will be performing solo from 6 to 9 PM with the band joining him afterwards.

The show takes place at the Tavern on the Hill, 8636 Germantown Avenue, at the very top of Chestnut Hill.

And don't forget to tip the staff.

Run for the Cause

2009-09-06T09:17:00.003-04:00

by Coach Ed
It's the weekend, so I'll get off Richie and his board for a while. (All right -you in the back-stop giggling) And talk a little sports-and politics-and race-My Spicy Triple Delight.

Since everyone has been talking about the Vickster (and I have given him Dina Hitchcock's phone number), I won't. Instead I will compare two figures and their shared problem, Donovan McNabb and Barack Obama.

They share some obvious common attributes; they're black, they're smart, they've been successful, and they have had the hopes of many piled on top of them.

But how they respond to their mix of attributes, both natural and acquired, and how Philadelphia and America responds to their response is the subject for this fine, soft, September day.

Responding to stereotypes is not ignoring them, it's acknowledging them. It's giving them credence. And that's what both of them have done, to their own, and our, detriment.

In the case if Donovan, it boiled down to the word, "athlete". Many of us would love to have that word used to describe us, even once. Alas, I never get to be called that, outside of my bed. But to many, it's just a euphemism, describing a "natural" talent, rather than expertise gained through work.

To many, it's a way to criticize someones' intellect by by praising their physique.

To many it's just another way of saying that they sure can run fast and jump high, and sing and dance.

Donovan knows this, and it had always eaten at him. If I were a racist, I would say that his guilt about this issue makes him seem not only white, but jewish.

So Donovan wants to prove he's not this stereotype of a talented but uncerebral black athlete, and has resisted using a part of his game that, while feeding into that stereotype, would improve his chances, and his teams chances for success.

Donovan doesn't like to run. I must acknowledge an unsolved mystery here. Perhaps Andy Reid is the one who does not allow this. His pass-first offense may indicate a general reluctance in this area. But all the other trickery that I have seen in this offense, including Vick's addition, seems to preclude this possibility.

And all that has been said on this subject, without it actually being said, leads me to the conclusion that Donovan thinks that running brands him as the kind of "natural', "gifted" player that is just means something else, the word we all know.

Vicks' addition may be the validation of the thesis, that now, Andy has someone who doesn't mind the label.

And over Donovan's shoulder has always been the specter of Randall Cunningham. If some of us don't remember, Donovan does. A better athlete than Donovan ever was, but a worse quarterback. But while the most racist fans probably always blamed Randall's "athleticism" for zero Super Bowl appearances, it was another non-athletic aspect of his game that hampered him, and his team.

Randall was Goofy. And Lazy. In preparation and during the game, he didn't take the time to see the situation clearly and react properly. And often he just plain didn't follow the plays called, even before they broke down. Making his runs necessary. And Vick was the same way.

As I write about a man being lazy who is also black, I think about what that sounds like, and I pause. That pause is a guilty reaction to the racist stereotype that I know exists. Some may be angered by the "lazy" remark. Some may anger over my guilty pause. Both sides of the story are created by the original dynamic.

But since every attribute and every color of person can intersect, that guilt must be overcome by the logic of that knowledge.

Randall was lazy and nutty, Donovan is neither. Both are black. Only two kinds of people draw any other lines between those attributes. Racists and people afraid of the stereotypes drawn by racists.
Fear of stereotyping exhibited by a guy who isn't afraid of Brian Urlacher just makes me more facinated by the human psyche than ever. And by the power of cultural indoctrination and the responses to it. Donovans intellectual fear is proof that he is thinking a little too much.

The ironic part has always been the way intellect and athleticism could have co-existed in the Eagles offense. If a running play would have been called for Donovan in the first quarter of every game, then the threat of it would have been as effective as it being repeated. That would have been the cerebral way of using athleticism to the teams advantage. That it was never utilized that way makes me think the dumb guy is the one with the headset.

Fear of what certain people might think or say has similarly paralyzed our chief executive. So locked into being reasonable, bi-partisan, and non-threatening, he has ceded the field to those with no such baggage.

Fear of being labeled radical has never been a right wing one. They've been that way, in or out of power. And to head off any possibility of balanced political epithet response (BPER), the right has cleverly begun to call the left both communist AND fascist, leaving us with nothing left to call them.

The response doesn't have to be emotional, it can be factual. Since 1968, Ku Klux Klan members, when they vote, vote Republican. Since 1968,The Aryan Nation, when they vote, vote Republican. Red State hate crimes are ten times the number of Blue States.

But when the right brings guns to public meetings, they just call out John Wayne's name, and all is forgiven. The last left wing group to bring guns to a public meeting were the Black Panthers. Who were the same color as the president. And so, just like Donovan, in order to give no one any reason to think he has anything in common with THOSE black men, the President tries to be more reasonable than any republican has ever thought of being.

It's a very noble pursuit. The only problem is, it has never worked, and it won't work now. They call him every name they can think of, except that one they really want to use. If he fought back, hard and dirty, could it get any worse? Could he get any less votes then they give him now? He has nothing to gain from this style, except their contempt and our collective failure.

Munich and Chamberlain"s appeasement has been used more than Larry Craig's ass. Why don't the dems ever think of the analogy in getting domestic policy passed? The last dem that used his balls outside of an interns' mouth was LBJ, and all we got was medicare and the voting rights act. If he would have put them in dry dock overseas, he would be as deified by dems as that orange haired alzheimer tool of orange county is now.

But Barry is afraid of the stereotype. Even as his tiny enforcer, Rahm-son-of-terrorist, lets Israel be as ballsy as they want to be (I guess the palestinians can't get into any town meetings), he tells the "radicals" of his own party to calm down.

So Barry, stay in the pocket and don't run, be reasonable, but know that it doesn't work when the other side doesn't play by the same rules. And just like Donovan, who has lost a step, it's probably too late. It will just seem vindictive if you start now. No super bowl and no health care. Because two black men were afraid of what the whites would think of them. The freudian tail end of racism coming back to destroy those who thought they had overcome.

Do You Read the Local?

2009-09-04T12:16:00.004-04:00

Do you read the Local? I do, on line, so it's free. Do you read the quotes from prominent Hillers that are printed in the Local? I do. Here are some.

Concerning variances sought by Richard Snowden's Bowman Properties:
Board member Dina Hitchcock commended Richard Snowden for sticking with his plans for the property "This is a far cry from 2004 when near neighbors of the property wanted to oppose development of that property at any cost." Dina, not a near neighbor, nor a resident of Chestnut Hill or Philadelphia, but of Malvern Pa., should read the Local's reporting of the process, in the August 12 and 26 2004 issues.

Turns out that she's full of shit. Read it yourself. The neighbors were quoted as supporting the project, but had concerns about parking during construction and wanted to know about the tenants and construction duration. L&I had already refused some aspects, and even the rubber stamp DRC had questions.

Katie Worrel reported it all. "Any Cost" was not a metaphor used. Richie withdrew, quoted then as saying he was "waiting for the phone to ring" from the neighbors. And Richie would not agree to a time limit, as proposed by the DRC, not the neighbors. Look it up, Dog Lady, I did.

Richie waited, and now no one asks him anything, cause he owns them.

Dina also doesn't mention when she fought Richie, tooth and nail, over his purchase of the 8431 property. I remember when she and her pal Carol (Smith College and Lithium-Great Together) Cope told ME to not worry about a vote on the subject at a board meeting. They brought up items for discussion that no one had ever thought about before, in order to postpone the sale indefinitely. It was the ONLY time we ever worked together. Convict and CHCA trustee Chip Butler overode their anti-Snowden plans with a Christmas recess property transfer - and who knows what other kind of transfer - against board orders.

After the meeting where Dina thwarted Richie's plans, she told me that Richie was a"sick puppy" and gloated whilst tippling at the bar with Carol.

Now Dina sits next to Richie at the board meetings and defends him in print.

Dina saw what Stewy Graham and others did, a new order coming, but while Stwey and his followers left the board, Dina just couldn't. It's her Life. So she buried the hatchet and now eats Snowden Shit. The price of the unbridled power one can retain as an ex-executive committee member of a community organization in a community she doesn't live in. Huh?

I smell a fat contribution to Dina's Pit Bull Rescue from a certain realty company. If not well, who's the sick puppy now? You mean you didn't do it for the other sick puppies?

Now to Richie's quotes. Get ready for the comedy, kids.

The Local reports, "He did not elaborate on his reasons on halting the project (back in 2004) "Instead , he said the "investment climate was not suitable for the project back then."
Here's where it gets wondrous. If you shake your head in response to that statement, remembering a booming economy and real estate market in 2004, and a depressed one now, I forgive you. That makes Richie's statement sound illogical. But actually, it makes it super logical, and fucked up evil, all at the same time.

Richie is in full control of the board and his projects now BECAUSE of the economy. It's what got the business association and all the bottom feeder merchants to swallow whatever he asked them to swallow, and take the board. You have to be a coal mine leaser to get projects going now, and that's just what Richie is.

It's more wondrous. Richie waited for Hill businesses to be weak enough financially, and the board weak enough organizationally, for him to take over. He didn't have to wait for any moral weakness. That one was always there. But Richie and his family have always preyed on the weak.

Some of them couldn't take it, but Richie thrives on it. His knowledge of Dina's past attitude towards him doesn't anger him, her turnaround is his victory. He waited, and won. He may comfort himself with a metaphor concerning the length of time it takes for coal to become coal, but probably NOT one about how long it takes for a glacier to melt.

But my favorite line from this week's Local is one that will go right next to the Pulitzer prize winner's "Snowden Should Die".

It's Richie saying,"I lose sleep thinking, What if we get it wrong?"

Richie, if you haven't lost sleep over leasing land your ancestors tricked farmers out of for strip mining, destroying their lungs, leaving rubble to contaminate their watershed, and spewing black filth into the blue sky, I think you'll be able to leave the Seconal in the medicine cabinet over the Gravers Lane thing.

Crime Pays - You Read It Here First

2009-09-01T13:21:00.009-04:00

by J. Edgar Feldman

I have been told the Local will report this, but maybe not. They certainly won't give the background I have already given you.

Rob Remus, coattail candidate from Sanjiv Jain's membership buy in the '08 election, has been paid off by the Chestnut Hill Community Association after threatening suit for some things that were printed about him in the Local, regarding an argument he had. I guess Robs' feelings were hurt.

Big bald burly Rob, who threatens women, and men whom he thinks, because of his attitude towards gay men, can't kick the shit out of him, who just offered me his children over the phone, and then thought better of it, just got paid off for being a thug.

Luckily for Rob, this time he picked an adversary with even smaller ones than his. Yes, the CHCA, in his debt for the bullying he has done to employees of the Local, now has given him $3500.00 of CHCA members' money to pay off his debts, or to get his children some therapy.

The suit was never brought, it was just threatened TO be brought. I could have saved you all the money by telling you that Rob has neither the cash or the balls to have actually brought the suit.
But while some of those who voted for the payoff did it for reasons of expediency, it was really a fee for services rendered.

Some folks just want the past to be buried, to make another unpleasant year go away.

Sound familiar? It should. I called it the "Let's Move On Tabernacle Choir." They've been singing the same tune for six years now.

Here's how it works. Someone on the board gets caught with their hand in your cookie jar. The Local, through letters, opinion pieces or reportage, would tell you about it. I would confront them about it at meeting. They would never deny it. They would say "Let's Move ON." "Let's not Dwell on the Past," followed by "You're Out Of Order." Election rigging, hush money payoffs, trustees dragged off to prison without any questions about their tenure watching your money.

I finally figured out that the only way I could get anyone punished is if I could rig up a Time Machine and get them BEFORE they committed the crime, then they couldn't say the "Past was Past" 'cause it wouldn't be the past yet. I'm still workin' on it.

I used to tell you in the Local. Now I tell you here.

No one ever threatened me with libel. But they would threaten the Local, and the Local would have to take it. The CHCA owns the Local, you see, and it wouldn't do for their financial circle jerk to be reported in their own newspaper. What's the point of owning a Paper if it tells people the dirty truth about you. It doesn't make sense!

After being dragged through endless evaluations of his work, threatened with being fired, bullied by punks like Rob, and John (Flight Risk) Capoferri before him, all brought on by vengeance-seekers in retaliation for their exposure, Pete the editor got tired of the fights. I can't blame him. It's all about the groceries. I know what it's like.

That's why you see my work here now. Our circulation is growing, and I get mail on my website nationwide for more details.

Here's some. To the reasonable folks who just want to end the unpleasantness, I have two communiques.

Legal expediency insults the law if administered unequally. You have not settled the Jimmy Pack claim. Jimmy Pack was a Local employee, who got into an argument with Rob, where, as reported by Jimmy, Rob threatened him, with the added flourish of anti-gay hate speech. It was reported in the Local by, among others, a man who is a reporter by trade, who got it from Jimmy, the victim.

Jimmy lost his job over this. Jimmy has brought a claim. The CHCA is fighting it. Rob just threatened to bring a claim. And now Rob has gotten paid. That's expediency or fair play or whatever you want to call it to the CHCA board.

To the reasonable, expedient ones, who thought this would put the past behind you, you have only succeeded in ripping off the scab. Unless you settled with Jimmy simultaneously, you have, in that famous court of public opinion, taken sides in these matter. And the Defendant's attorney in the Pack suit will note this.

You have sided with Rob, who has a history of contentiousness and bullying, all documented, against an openly gay man in a case that has an element of anti-gay hate speech.

Does litigation expediency ever account for publicity - or public opinion - or the story being juicy enough to be picked up by the wider press? Shouldn't that factor into your Realpolitik interpretation of the incident and its resolution?

The Irony here is in the amount of closeted gay men who have and do hold posts on the board and in the CHCA. Their silence is the most troubling of all to me. It is easy for me to interpret the bullshit marketed by the board and accepted by an uninterested neighborhood as the latter's Karma. But individuals whose fear deprives them of the voice that has been given them through struggle and sacrifice just saddens me. I would here ask for someone to send in the the gay version of Uncle Tom, but I won't hold my breath.

My second message to those who voted for the Remus payoff with good intentions is this, and I'll put in a way in which I have heard so many other preface their endless remarks in board meetings.

Ahem! I have been in the Hill for long enough to know - Harrumph! - that while your heart may be pure, the majority is using your "reasonableness" as a tool for their greed and their pathological vengeance. They got you to agree to pay off their stooge. He was Sanjiv's stooge before that-and to screw Jimmy further. They have always worked this way, only the helpers change.

And here's the capper. The money paid to Rob, who threatened a Local employee, will be taken out of the Local. The whole affair has already been blamed on "lax" mangement by Pete and he'll take another hit for the actions of his enemies. That's how it will work. Which weakens the Local even more. So while Jimmy just gets threatened with an anal assault, the Local actually gets to experience one.

Those who thought this to be the expedient play did not think this through.

Missing Nixon?

2009-08-31T15:17:00.003-04:00

Dysfunctional systems can be local or national. Corporate influence follows the same pattern.

As Paul Krugman notes:

Part of the answer is that the right-wing fringe, which has always been around — as an article by the historian Rick Perlstein puts it, “crazy is a pre-existing condition” — has now, in effect, taken over one of our two major parties. Moderate Republicans, the sort of people with whom one might have been able to negotiate a health care deal, have either been driven out of the party or intimidated into silence. Whom are Democrats supposed to reach out to, when Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was supposed to be the linchpin of any deal, helped feed the “death panel” lies?

Go and read the column in today's NYTimes.

And then there's Matt Bai, who takes a look at the political landscape and declares town hall meetings dead as a form of dialogue.

Curiouser and Curiouser

2009-08-30T12:23:00.003-04:00

As Flounder said, "Oh Boy, This is Great!"

I just got a call from Rob Remus. You may remember Rob. He managed real estate for Sanjiv Jain's Legacy realty. Sanjiv tried to use him as muscle at some meetings, but it turned out that Rob was all talk. Rob got on the board when all those memberships were bought for out of state relatives and friends of people who worked for Sanjiv. Mr Patel, another employee, resigned from the board. Rob got to stay. No one knows why.

He tried to tell journalists how to run a newspaper, and used used some colorful language about a persons' sexuality to cover what I pecieved as an obvious attraction to him. ("The Love impulse in the Male often manifests itself in terms of Conflict" - Dr Fritz Lehman).

Yesterday, I was told that Rob had been given $3200.00 by the CHCA for something to do with the Local. To find out more about it, I called Rob. No answer. I didn't leave a message. But, follow-ups being the core of any businessman's trade, he Star69ed me-on a Sunday-to see if anyone wanted to pay him anything for anything.

I asked him about the money. He replied,"Hey Ed, want to talk to my Kids?- Hey kids-say hello to uncle Ed." I heard childrens voices and then then Rob returned. "Are you kidding, Ed, I would never let you talk to my kids." (I had said nothing) He then said "You know you're as smart as my kids." I continued to try and ask him about the money, and surprisingly, he hung up.

So Rob, who once told a gay man that he wanted to insert a body part into his body, now offers, then denies, access to his children to me for some reason. He dangled his kids in front of me for a reason that I can't even imagine.

Maybe someone should talk to Robs' wife about her husbands' interesting offers. Not me. I'll find out about the money, but I don't really want to know about the other stuff that goes on in that house.

Now that Rob has used his kids inappropriately, I guess I should be allowed to tell them all about their Daddy. But I'll let them find out on their own. The Odds Makers have Rob down as the next domino in the Chip Butler-John Capoferri-Frog Walk Parade.

Thanks Rob!

The Children's Hour

2009-08-30T11:20:00.003-04:00

Hey kids, I just found out something I should have found out already that proves my point some more. Stupidly, I figured that when Mark resigned from being CHCA Treasurer to spend more time with his family, or at his job, or because the sun was in his eyes, he was resigning from the board as well. This is not the case.

It seems as if Mark has enough time with his family to stay on the board. Maybe he can be on some other committees so he won't be able to spend that family time he used as an excuse.
Mark, you idiot. The only way this fantasy had any credibility at all, enough to fool - well, I don't know who you people can fool any more - was if you booked from the whole damn thing.

Thank you for fortifying Theory #4 - You were patted on the head, told you could stay up late and watch the adults have their party, but you had to watch from the top of the stairs. Good Boy.

The reason I didn't report this was a failure that I, as a writer, feel badly about. I'm supposed to able to put myself in the the place of my subjects, in order to give life to actions and emotions that they are doing and feeling.

That I am sometimes unable to synthesize the depths of child-like stupidity that these people exhibit over and over again makes me feel a little embarrassed.

Mark, this resignation-but-not is akin to hiding your shitty underpants under the couch and thinking no grown-up will ever follow the smell.

They Do Herd /The Morning Line

2009-08-29T11:34:00.007-04:00

Territoriality Among the Chromosomally Engineered by Dr Benjamin (Benny Southstreet) Leakey

Mark Keintz may well be spending more time with his family, because I reached him at home at 11:30 A.M. on Saturday. I told him I wanted to help, but he politely declined.

But I do. Because his resignation was not an act of free will, and I thought I could offer him some.

So let's go through the possibilities. John Lombardi's conjectures serve well as a starting point.

Theory# 1 Mark's given Reason. Odds 100-1 Where have YOU been?

There is no way in hell Mark would have given up a post that he worked so hard for, licked so many nether reasons for, and lied so much to keep, for any reason approaching free will. If you saw him gamely defending the CHCA, the group that just took a shit on him, at the Chestnut Hill Residents' meeting, you might just cry for the little fella. Mark gave up that free will stuff long ago, to be able to escape the Dilbert Cubicle of the Eternally Ignored he has occupied since childhood.

He was finally allowed to play with the bigger kids. They even gave him a title. Treasurer. That Mark had no professional experience in any financial arena only increased his usefulness.
Although a charming personal experience may indicate his willingness, if not his expertise at budgetary exploration.

While teaching at Penn, I would occasionally observe Mark and a co-worker comparing prices at the food carts, searching for the best lunchtime deal. My criteria being culinary and service quality kept me loyal to two or three dispensers of Mobile Cuisine, Aluminum Clad Division.

I know the reason for this bargain based odyssey, because I asked him, and he told me. He was still speaking to me then. When I expressed my confusion on the subject, due to the fact that the lunch carts were the same ones every day, staked out at the same spots every day, with the same dishes and the same prices every day, he replied, "Well you know, something might change."

That response always indicated a kind of longing in Mark. His days of hunched computer genuflection, where nothing ever changes, his lunchtime freedom to hope for something to happen outside the bounds of zip code 00110111000110110.

No, Marks' willingness to do whatever it took to be in the greatest, most prestigious job he ever had would not have been relinquished for anything as tired and overused as personal or professional reasons.

Theory #2: Investigation Fear. Odds 8-1. Don't Go near this

The ongoing investigation, springing from the findings of the oversight committee, duly constituted by the CHCA board during its' brief tenure of being run by folks who were not lining their pockets, padding their resume's, or feeding their pathology, has been the reason for a number of resignations.

The first to hide were the profession/political climbers. Their financial sights were set on larger amounts of fish than Hill business could ever provide. Big white shoe law firm/City money makes Hill lettuce comically small time. I chronicled the exodus of Jeremy Heep and his bourgeois treadmill partner Tia Burke as they went from the CHCA's prom King and Queen to undisclosed location dwellers, literally overnight.

Dropping off the face of the earth is not an overstated metaphor. No explanation in the Local, not even one blaming official "evil ones" (including me), or board disfunction, nothing. When you don't even have an official story, the only motive is one of self preservation, where every minute out of spotlight increases your chance of escape.

More recently we have the cheese eaters of the money and pathology groups who saw a duck and cover strategy as a way to not only wait out a potential legal shitstorm, but as deep cover for their real Darwinian reason.

Back to Mark. He knew about the investigation, but stayed all this time. He has no pipeline whatsover to any inside timetable that may tell him that the gettin' out time is now. And the longer he stayed, the more he did as he was told, the more he implicated himself. Even he knew that.

Since I know you read this Mark, let me say that even you know this move will not help you. That's a compliment, right? And here's another one. I don't think Mark stayed on to line his pockets. If you want to ascribe that non-action to a particular category of ethics, go ahead.

But as one who ascribes to instinct above intellect, I see it more plainly. If Mark ever tried to take a pencil home from work, he would have a diaper full of shit before he hit the parking lot. To be kind, I'll just say, "It's not in his nature."

No, as we now see on the board, the great partnership is the one between money and the balls you need to do anything to get it. It's what makes the world spin, and reek like garbage and decaying flesh. If people lied and died for principles like they do for money, we would all still be naked and avoiding One particular Tree.

Those that are left at the board are there for the money, or following inner demons that they can't control, or both. Along with a few innocent innocents who, I hope, are enjoying the Theater.

Theory #3. Punishment for Telling some version of the Truth. Odds 3-1 Place bet as part of the Daily Double

While this theory has its proponents, it's just part of the big bet. Mark's minor financial faux pas as smoking gun is overstated. The emperor has been naked at board meetings for so long we have given names to every one of his venereal warts.

Any truth, especially a bit as insignificant as the one Mark let slip, would have been acted on as aggressively as; two purchased elections and counting, one case of bank fraud, tax cheats as trustees, nonresidents as vice presidents, ( I get tired telling you this so often), and everything now controlled by a middle aged Village-of-the-the-Damned cast member who, if Mother Earth had boots, would lodge one so deep in a particular locale of his, three board members would have "Timberland" embossed on their foreheads.

Theory #4. Richie's House Cleaning. Odds-Even Money- Bet the Coal Mine

As I have stated on these electrons before, the exodus of those who saw the future was almost complete before the last "election." Stuart Graham, Man of Litmus, lead his Children out of the Library in silence, as he had so often during his tenure as Chestnut Hill's own Karl Rove. Hey, I know the comparison is easy, but it's worked so well, why stop now? Always the power behind everyone except the reformers, hogtied as a republican in Philadelphia, this was Stewey's power base, albeit one where the base was the only place on which he could assert any power. See, I told you it was a good comparison!

Stewey saw a little danger coming with badges, and he is a cautious type. But he has kept so many personal and professional secrets for so long, he could have toughed out any storm. So while his, Ned (proud of my racism) Mittinger, and Frau Becker's retreat have an element of line-of -fire to it, its' real reason was the Darwinism I mentioned earlier, with a healthy side of finance.

Stewey is not only an incredibly minor Pol, he's also owns real estate in the Hill. How he got it is another story and a pip. (Thanks Lloyd!) But any minor player knows who daddy is. And guess who Daddy is?

When Richard Snowden (start typing employees-but use grammar check this time) created Positively Chestnut Hill, with Zondercommando Greg Welsh as Dov Landau, Stewey knew it was time, and he gave his usual sage advice to those who had always followed him before.

But so much of the world functions like the children's board game, chutes and ladders. As one who has reached the top of certain area of endeavor, I saw that, in so many ways, how its' pinnacle was located directly under the ass end of another.

Politics, particularly city politics, has such a relationship with business, particularly business that has a stranglehold on the same district as the politician in question.

Frankly, that Richard had to see how another local realtor bought an election before he figured it out doesn't speak well for his intellect. But he's got it now.

Stewey and his people got out of the way, knew they couldn't win, Stewey hoping for later consideration, and there you have it. Velociraptors leave when T-Rex shows up. Of course the real players, the Ultrasaurus' in 19118 can't be bothered with Richie's obsession and, if they pay any attention at all, probably giggle just like I do.

But who was left? The fools like Kientz, the crazies like Dina, and the useful puppies, like Piatrowski. Dina is still the mystery. Has she made a deal, or does Richie just consider her Jane with an extra Y? To be privy the unspoken interplay between the two, I would give my leather bound copy of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis.

But Treasurer is too important a job for someone not completely in Richie's pocket. All the other positions are window dressing, like the new Treasurer's business.

So someone gave Mark a choice. Like Rommel, only with a better retirement plan. Resign or we will toss you. Since Mark has always thought this childrens' play he was involved in had something to do with the world of duty and honor he has seen in old movies, he "took the honorable way out." A living parody 'til the end. The only thing left for him to do is dress up in his Treasurers' Uniform and get the Lugar out.

Now a man who got his lovely house decorated for free, just 'cause he likes animals, is gonna figure out how to throw the final shovel full of dogshit on the Local. David Mansfield installs windows. Richard owns buildings that have windows. God bless America.

Pete, I told you. Doing what they want only makes them do it harder. You had a chance with Mark. Yet another sentence I never thought I would ever write. But as Boswell said, the more more you discover, the freakier it gets. Observing Snowden, it wouldn't surprise if his real punishment for you does not come in the form of termination, but in the humiliation of firing all of those who have been loyal to you, as you say nothing.

If I were what I perceive him to be, that is exactly what I would do. Exquisite sadism.

High Anxiety

2009-08-28T18:09:00.006-04:00

Choking the Local
by John Lombardi

A few weeks ago, Mark Keintz, then the CHCA treasurer, published an Op Ed in the paper which was surprisingly frank about the state of the CHCA's finances -- the fact that the paper had turned a few thou profit -- wow! after 51 years in business; that Quita Horan was about to knock off her $40,000 annual stipend next year (presumably because she was sickened by the inchworm mentality of CHCA officials and their repeated errors of judgement); and about the state probe into CHCA financial records, still ongoing though unremarked by the scribes of the Local -- who've been "prevented" -- according to their defenders -- from writing anything serious about the behind-the-scenes atmosphere in CHCA .

But Thursday night, Keintzy, not exactly a Brave Heart when it comes to standing up in controversial situations, resigned his position, reportedly reading from a letter to Philip LeCalsey, and citing the need to spend more time with his family -- the usual rationale. Were the members of the Executive Committee angry with him for his truthful blat in the Local -- after all, they've succeeded in getting pretty much everything else in the weekly "news" hole closed down to happy "stories," like the recent one on the refurbishment of the Chestnut Hill Hotel --attagirl Jenny Katz! (And if you hang on long enough, you may get that "Editor's" job after all.) Or pieces about Snowden's success getting easements for his latest setback exception requests -- thrillorama!

Darker rumors have Keintz scuttering away before the State of Pennsylvania finally bestirs itself on bookkeeping peculiarities -- not that he was responsible, but just that he didn't want to be on the line defending them. Or, to give the man his due -- maybe he truly did disagree with the Choke the Local to Death mania that the new Exec regime seems to subscribe to. Knowing nothing at all about journalism and caring less, the Execs first emasculated editor and staff, and are now -- the word is -- turning to production. David Mansfield, who replaced Keintz Thursday, and who swept in last Spring with the Snowden forces, has reportedly been noising it around that the paper just costs too much, and could take a cut of $200,000! It's production department should be outsourced! A ludicrous idea, said to be born of Mansfield/ Larry Hochberger "business pragmatism."

Far from being "a full participant" in the running of the Local, as has been claimed by Walter Sullivan, the "Editor" is said to know so little about this that he is reduced to working back channels of source info -- just like a common blogger.

News flash for the Execs and their several staffs: Newspapers are groups, like teams or tribes. If you reduce them relentlessly to "efficient" blocs of workers, just in it for the money, like Walmart employees, and operating at minimum cred with the community -- you end up with a disaffected staff, indifferent readers, and a "McNewsburger". Or with a sale to a McNewsburger chain, like JRC.

Or you just close up.

The old rule was to hire a genius crew of reporters & editors, and killer squads of ad sales & circulation staff. And never let 'em near each other. Abandoning that notion has resulted in the kind of journalistic Mogadishu we have now.
•••
For Michael Vick, the kindness of dog lovers among Local letter writers:

"This man who hanged them and shot them & held them under water until they were dead, should get the same treatment." (Frank Heffelfinger, Wyndham); "The only second chance Michael Vick should get should be . . . as a trash collector, picking up dog poop." (Lillian Rosen, Wyndham); "Dumb old Andy Reid has a soft spot for felons (his sons' drug troubles)." (Chris Bacheler. Drexel Hill); "[He] fell to the bottom of that fetid sewer known as dogfighting. He is a monster, completely without mercy. . . therefore, no mercy whatsoever can be shown toward him. Punitive guidelines are grossly insufficient." (Bridget Irons, Chestnut Hill).

Dynastic Martyrdom

2009-08-28T10:28:00.001-04:00

"dynastic martyrdom" is my new favorite thing.

it just feels so ... grand ... and dark but at the same time majestic.

Use the Tools You Have Been Given

2009-08-26T17:14:00.005-04:00

Barack Obama now has his chance. He has the Altar of Ted Kennedy from which to demand single payer health care.

The swing demographic on this issue are Reagan democrats, who were Kennedy democrats before that. Their heartstrings can be plucked, but he must work quickly, and emotionally.
They trusted Ted. Would he have lied to them about health care? It was his life's work.

If he cannot use the Kennedy dynastic martyrdom to sell what the majority of Americans want, what a majority of the first worlds' citizens and a majority of America's old people enjoy and endorse, he is not the politician we thought he was, and deserves the failure in which his presidency will be viewed.

If he refuses to use the emotion of Kennedy's death and the unfinished business of his legislative life, then the fix was always in.

Mark Antony used a bier to gain an empire. This is about a fucking bill.

If he doesn't want to use emotion to sway the people, if he continues to view them as dispassionate college freshmen, then he is in the wrong business, or the wrong country.

word on the street...

2009-08-21T10:32:00.004-04:00

I heard this rumor that John Capoferri has moved down to Florida?
To Palm Beach I hear.
I wonder if he'll open a grocery market or invest in property.

I tried to make that a haiku but it's too early.

Bob...

2009-08-19T14:26:00.004-04:00

I wanted to take a second to acknowledge the life of Robert Zatzman, who passed away this past weekend. Almost everyone I have met in Chestnut Hill knew or knew of Bob. His shop's location kept changing and evolving (never more than 20 feet) but he was a staple on Germantown Ave for longer than most can remember.

Even musicians downtown would bring their stuff to Bob to repair, tweak, etc.

So my thoughts are with his family in this sad time. I will also keep this blog up to date on details of a memorial concert that is being organized.

And Bob: Keep playing.

Update: Information on a memorial service can be found in the comments.

From his nephew, Josh Zatzman:
It's Thursday August 20th, at 7 PM to 10 PM. Please bring your instruments we will be telling stories and playing music in his honor. We also plan to have a concert in his honor around October 3rd, anyone is welcome to come and perform. The address for the wake is: 234 East Church Road Elkins Park PA 19027

Germantown Unsettled ...

2009-08-19T11:59:00.004-04:00

Ah, the Germantown Settlement situation; Germantown's cousin to the CHCA saga.

The Germantown Chronicle for August 23 isn't out yet, the story hasn't been read and Emanuel V. Freeman thinks he knows what will be revealed. The web was buzzing starting at 8 Wednesday morning.

"Much of their information is not accurate," sez Freeman. Freeman couldn't have read it, but he has his message flying all around the intertubes in Northwest Philly and is spinning his damage control as fast as he can. Take a look at who gets the e-mail sent this morning - Philadelphia politicians with toeholds in Harrisburg.

According to Freeman, the Chronicle follows the "negative editorial practices of the former Germantown Courier." Please. The Courier was fish wrap from JRC, suitable for burying dead guppies from the home aquarium. It had neither the time nor the staff to investigate what was going on with the Settlement outfit.

And Emanuel, what about those houses on the 200 block of Penn Street? How they holding up?

So, Emanuel, read the story and then critique it. It lends a little credibility to your arguments, however weak they may be.

You want to read the story, get this week's Germantown Chronicle (August 20). The piece is on the paper's web site today - Wednesday, August 19.

So here's this morning breathless spin from EVF of GS. In the e-mails below, non-government addresses have been redacted.

Unabashed Sunshine Policy Statement: I, Scott Alloway, work at the Chronicle in several capacities, not the least being web editor.

From: "Youngblood, Rosita"
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:23:50 -0400
To: Tim S. Ries; RT Donovan; Wall, Cherise; Tolentino, David; Barabin, Rochelle
Subject: FW: Germantown Chronicle

FYI

From: McClure, Miriam
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 8:04 AM
To: Donna Reed Miller (donna.miller@phila.gov); david.yurky@phila.gov; Myers, John; Kinsey, Stephen; LeAnna Washington (washington@pasenate.com); Evans, Dwight; Youngblood, Rosita; Curtis Jones; marian.tasco@phila.gov
Cc: Freeman, Emanuel V.
Subject: Germantown Chronicle
Importance: High

To Friends of Germantown Settlement:

The Germantown Chronicle is going to run an article on GS/GGHDC and it will likely attempt to paint a very negative picture. It will draw attention to the financial challenges we are facing, including payroll, city and state taxes (all of which we have secured payment agreements for), and any IRS issues (we have also addressed and have submitted a proposed agreement which has not yet been approved).

Much of their information is not accurate but nonetheless it will further damage our image as an organization. This is the primary purpose of such articles. I have attempted to address some of what they raised but do not think they are likely to print much, if anything, that I said. While GS and GGHDC do have some liens and judgments (some of which were paid off or are included in our 2006 refi of the Burgess Center and some of the appropriate adjustments have not yet been made), I suspect what we outlined will also not be updated.

We have secured financing commitments for the Germantown YWCA (and the city is allowing us the needed time to move forward on this project). Our loan on the Burgess Center has matured and we have identified the sources to refinance. We have a new venture, identified as Medical Adult Day Care, and have just submitted financing proposals for the development and it will replace aging services. Our properties at 324 East High Street and Waring House at 48 East Penn Street will be converted into Child Care Centers. Together, these projects will generate more than enough revenue to pay off all liens and bring current any taxes that may become due between now and the end of the year.

We have executed a partnership agreement with a for-profit firm to co-develop the GYWCA. This site will in fact become our new home and the GYWCA will be placed back into service as a viable community facility. Within the next few months, we will complete the leasing on Burgess Center.

Wendy’s is now under construction and we expect to lease out the space now occupied by GS and GGHDC staff. This will likely require us to relocate to another section of the Burgess Center. This move will be temporary until the GYWCA is completed.

While the Germantown Chronicle is a new paper, it continues to follow the negative editorial practices of the former Germantown Courier. In many ways these are the same people that we, and the elected officials that support us, feel have historically treated us unfairly.

Other organizations within this community have challenges, but no one seems to make it public and write articles about them. We are resolved to stay the course, address our issues and continue to serve our people the best we can with what we have.

Thanks,

Emanuel V Freeman

Lies, Damn Lies and the GOP ...

2009-08-11T20:33:00.003-04:00

The lies and misinformation from the Right Wing on health care legislation continues, with Republican politicians leading the charge.

Check these two stories about the scare tactics Republicans use, including Killing Grandma and Death Panels - "Don't Talk to Me About Death Panels" and "Death Panels Are Already Here."

Steve Pearlstein at the Washington Post documents Republican lies on health care reform here.

Sen. Specter had a charming encounter with the lunatic fringe today in Lebanon, Pa. Birthers, deathers. Grand Old Party, ain't it. If you're confused about Birthers and Deathers, read below.

From Kos:

Deather, defined

Main entry: deather
Function: noun
Etymology: From birther, a related conspiracy theory which holds that President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen. Inspired by the teabaggers of April 15, 2009.
Date: Mid-2009
Definition: One who believes or spreads the false conspiracy theory that the health care reform legislation before Congress would create "death panels" or force seniors and sick people into euthanasia.
Examples: Sarah Palin is a deather. Glenn Beck is a deather. Rush Limbaugh is a deather.

Health care change needs our support. Do something to stop the Know-Nothings looking to stop change.

As a reminder, there's always Sarah Palin and her world view. Countdown takes her down in this clip.

Update: In fairness, the Teabaggers offer their contributions to civil discourse.

Update: Aug. 29: And Ted Kennedy has the final word about compromising - from beyond the grave.

More on Goldman Sachs

2009-08-10T09:09:00.001-04:00

This is a followup on the Goldman Sachs post seen below. Good conversation on the Goldman "conspiracy theory" at Balloon Juice.

Scott Alloway

Goldman Sachs: Running the Country Since 1999

2009-08-10T09:00:00.002-04:00

Ten months after an election that purportedly would usher in a major reversal of our national priorities, beginning with a financial empire in free-fall, the New York Times this (Sunday) morning presents an "expose" on the cozy relationship between the federal government and Wall Street's biggest power broker and the one closest to U.S. monetary policy since the late 1990s - - Goldman Sachs. Today's Inquirer editorial page also wades into this morass of insider dealings and using the largest expenditure of taxpayer money to prop up one industry in world history. Where were the Times' crack investigative reporters when this was first announced in the back pages of the national press last September? - - and even worse where were they as the Obama administration took this major scam on the citizenry to new heights?

Please skip whatever you are doing this morning, open this NY Times news story on Goldman Sachs/Treasury Secy Paulson, and then follow the rest of the trail as I tell you larger story.

These questions about former Treasury Secretary Paulson's relationship with Goldman Sachs and the bailouts surfaced when crises was unfolding, but now, almost eight months after a new administration is in place, we have a post-mortem article of this type finally making public what could have and should have been on front and financial pages while the deals were being done.

For the first time we learn that a long-term Republican representative, Cliff Stearns of Florida (frequent critic of his own party's policies) questioned the insider deal then. Would you not think that would have been a major story at the time, particularly with the conflict of interest issue widely known inside the financial sector?

Of course things were happening very fast from September to election day, but two months later a new president from the opposition party, and an entirely new administration were about to be installed to deal with these world-wide financial problems. Why not put this type of situation front and center and let a new broom really sweep clean?

But you see the Obama administration not only did nothing to reverse the involvement of Goldman Sachs types in the bailout process, as both direct and indirect recipients of the public money, they recruited more Goldman Sachs executives to run virtually every newly-created financial department that would oversee the distribution and direct of all those billions; pardon me trillions!

The New York Times newspaper, lapdog for the Obama administration and Democratic Party public relations tool, could not possibly run such a story then, as the public might learn that those very insider Wall Street types that Obama was appointing and delegating were not only some of the same ones the Bush administration used, but even more of them from the same institution were installed in key positions where they still serve. Investigative journalism, with timing when it counts, is no longer performed at the New York Times.

I think the Bush administration was largely a failure on many fronts, so don't jump to any conclusions about my point here. What you must know, and again only reported parenthetically at the time, is that the Obama election campaign received more private funding than any candidate in political history, and the largest bloc came from Wall Street. He was and is only returning the favor - - quid pro quo!

But you see Goldman Sachs has a long history in running our government as it began when another Goldman alumnus was Treasury Secretary. Robert Rubin, whom Clinton appointed was the mastermind of the financial deregulation bill that he and Clinton supported enthusiastically, with the full unquestioned participation of both parties in the congress in the form of the Graham-Leech bill. The Bill that undid all the safeguards on banking and speculation put in place during the Roosevelt years. Don't let the phony news stories fool you, deregulation of commercial enterprises begun during Regan years had nothing to do with financial deregulation. That came much, much later and was the brainchild of Rubin and Clinton after massive campaign contributions came from Wall Street insiders like Sanford Weil of Citibank; another Rubin creation.

For you see, the Democratic and Republican parties are identical in what they really do, and who they really answer to. There are as many fat-cat Democratic business leaders today as Republicans. What you witness daily is a smoke-screen that keeps the illusion alive that there is a dime's worth of difference between them when it comes down to it. If anything the Republicans are less hypocritical, as they make it clear that government money helping industry and management at the top will "trickle down" and benefit everyone. The Democrats claim to fund the needs of the people directly, but in point of fact, they are also using a "trickle down" program as they piss on your shoes.

Jim Foster
Publisher,
Germantown Newspapers Inc.
5275 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, Pa. 19144
215-438-4000

High Anxiety: Dog Day Journalism

2009-08-08T12:01:00.003-04:00

by John Lombardi

A cool blast of air-conditioning, like walking into Bill Kilian's place 10 years ago, out of the stifling August shmutz of Germantown Avenue. That's what it felt like to read Len Lear's "Get Over It" Op Ed on the Huntingdon Valley swim club flap a couple of weeks ago, in the Local. And then Jim Foster's "Where's the money going?" blog lede in this space the other day. Two guys of a certain age, with common sense and libertarian leanings, commenting on the goop of PC non-think that's becoming characteristic of American journalism exchanges from the Times, to the networks, to PBS & NPR, to the Local and Northwest Notebook, too.

One guy here says we can't criticize the exaggerators going for a couple of lucrative lawsuits against the swim club because the children of Creative Steps, Inc., who happened to be black, were "irreparably scarred" by being asked to leave the pool -- even though they got a trip to Disneyworld, all kinds of apologies, goodies and worldwide publicity, as a result. So why not let 'em back in the water, after the club operators relented? The sweating kids would have probably jumped right in. It's hot. But the media event was paying off better.

Foster's point is that the Obama administration isn't starting WPA-style "job stimulus" operations in massive road repair, bridge and tunnel upgrades, inner city clearing and rebuilding, or National Park refurbishment -- as promised back in January -- but instead is just giving billions to bankers who caused the problems in the first place -- Reagan's old "trickle down" nonsense. And of course O did this without having established any oversight structure to prevent repeat greedhead depredations -- as FDR once had the strength & foresight to do. And which still causes hisses of "That man!" among senior Republicans, and the rich generally. Nobody wants to talk about this, though, in the spirit of giving the nation's first black president "a chance."

The deal is, you can't take care of organic problems with P.R. solutions. Life isn't a matter of sound-bytes, camera angles and breathless star talk on Meet the Nation and Charlie Rose, or The McNeil/Lehrer Snoozehour. Anyone who believes Henry Louis Gates wasn't at least partly to blame for his own arrest in Cambridge by Sgt. Steve Lowrey , should check out the endless, smug, star-crossed chit-chat among Gates and a group of mostly white academics in the recent PBS documentary on Abraham Lincoln's "racism" in the 1850s, and during the Civil War. While the professors dined in period taverns on the Southern battlefields of yore, dragging out their musings over pheasant and Cote' de Beaune, Gates held sway, lecturing with raised eyebrows & querulous looks about Lincoln's plans to repatriate millions of former slaves to Africa. . ,

Marcus Garvey and some others seemed to feel it wasn't a bad notion at several points in U. S. history, and Gates condescended to leave the question of Lincoln's prejudice open -- after all, millions of blacks stood along the railroad tracks after he was shot, and not to curse him as a racist. But Gatesy makes a good living at Harvard now, and making documentaries on African-American subjects like Phillis Wheatley, America's first black poetess, forced to endure the prejudice of the founding fathers, and uplifting stuff like "From Great Zimbabwe to Kilomatinde," which isn't too harsh about that paragon of humanism, Robert Mugabe.

But PC/PR rules. Internationally and nationally, we're supposed to buy that Bill Clinton somehow snatched two minor reporters for Al Gore's TV stations, without White House involvement (except for an "attaboy"), on a couple of days turnaround , from Kim Jung Il's dire North Korean clutches; that an old Bush plan to assassinate the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban was heroically dismantled by old Clinton hand Leon Panetta (the CIA kill teams were never operational, and the news broke just in time to counteract GOP propaganda against Health Care reform). But given all the Clintonites in the White House now, what are we seeing? . . . A demonstration that Bill, Hill and O are Chill? That if Hill had won, we'd be getting the same inchworm consensus media strategy instead of real policy? . . . Boring scoops for the long, hot summer.

Locally, we have Minibrain Keintz in for Foghorn Sullivan as Op Ed commentator this week, admitting how bad the CHCA financial picture is -- a 50 year-old weekly yielding a few thou profit, and calling that an upturn; a cockadoodle rooster scream because the Hitchcock gang has finally got a stranglehold on Local spending through Hochy, and a slightly more scary one because Quita's $40,000 annual grant only has a year to go . . . Let's see: strange speculations as to why the "editor" allegedly remarked before going on vacation that his Deputy News guy might be looking around; that either Walter or Hochy mentioned another "belt-tightening" was likely at the paper soon, because of an unexpected $20,000 loss in revenue (unconfirmed); that Lou "Ratso" Aiello was behind a push for Marie Lachat to head the Aesthetics Committee, a quid pro quo involving his little home repair business -- the "Chestnut Hill Way" of doing things.

And that numerous readers of the Local and the blog loved Lear's blasts in "Get Over It!". But were too chicken to say so.

Everybody's Guilty, But Some More Than Others

2009-08-07T17:20:00.004-04:00

To honor my suggestion to Mssrs. Foster and Lombardi, I will change the subject. Besides, people get the leaders they deserve, and that goes double for the Hill. Eternal vigilance to ones self interest always ends badly. It's always easier to fool those who fool others for a living. They think they're the only ones who are playing the game. Roll the Maloumian-Capoferri video for instructional purposes here. Greg Welsh should watch the tape very closely.

So, as it turns out, the election of a black man to the presidency seems to have incited a race war, hasn't it? NOT what we expected. Remember when ecstatic black people were interviewed in the streets on election night? So many said, " I still can't believe it!-It still hasn't sunk in yet!"
It didn't sink in for some others until much later. They REALLY couldn't believe it . They still seem to have a hard time believing it. Mind you, most of this latter group doesn't know how a toaster works either, but that hasn't stopped them from being experts on health care, or birth certificates, or the history of black racism in America.

But when the idea of who was elected finally got through their Miracle Whip and Budweiser soaked thick skulls, they blinked their eyes and said what the citizens of Rock Ridge said when Sheriff Bart came to town.

Except they can't say it out loud. For what they want to say, what they want to call President Barry is forbidden to them. They can taste the word. They can feel the hard "double G" consonants between their tongue and the top of their mouth, the gutteral "R" at the end that literally turns the last half of the word into a growl. White people always like to pronounce the "R" sound in that word. The white Southerners just put it in front of their self invented "a" sound at the end. The word is stuck in their craw like Barry is stuck in their House.

It's the most important word in our culture today and they can't say it. It's the word that hangs in the air, like Ezekiel's Wheel. It's the word freighted with such importance that its very use is accorded to certain groups and forbidden to others, like a rare commodity rationed in times of national duress.

It's a word that has it's own official euphemism, one that takes its name from the first letter of the word itself. I refuse to use that euphemism, for the same reason I do not use the official term used to describe the Nazi Death Camps. Because facts are facts. As a kid , I knew some with the tattoos of the numbers, and they always just said, "the camps." The camps. The imagery was stark, not poetic. When PR types start to give official terms after those events have happened, it portends the marketing of those events. It signals the packaging of those events for the benefit of those who have named them. And sometimes packaging causes trouble. Any country that had two groups, one who called themselves the chosen people, and one who called themselves the master race, well, you knew there was gonna be trouble. Now the Israel Pac uses the word it helped invent to finance its own racial expansion.

Another example. As I watched the first tower smoke, and as I watched the plane hit the second tower, I counted down. I told my daughter, "Now it is real. Now we are all witnesses. As soon as they name it, the conjecture, the fill, the spin, the lies will begin." And when "America Under Attack" came up under the pictures, I knew that the marketing had begun. Some marketed that event to their own news show, others to their own war, others to their own fortune.

So I don't use official euphemisms. But some people are allowed to use the word itself. Yes, it turns out that black people are given some rights in America that white people do not have. They have explicit permission to use that word to describe each other. They also have permission to describe black females as bodies for hire or as animals. How thoughtful of white America to have accorded the special privilege of demeaning yourselves to all of you. You owe thanks. And to those who make millions on the unending, repeated imagery of the killing of black men and the demeaning of black women, I think I can speak for the whites who once owned you. Thanks for doing our work for us. And if doing the massa's work for him isn't the definition of an Uncle Tom, I don't know what is. So I just called all the gangsta rappers Uncle Toms. That makes Len Lear and Rush Limbaugh seem like a couple of Pussies, doesn't it?

I would here illustrate the time line between rap music's beginnings, when it sprung out of black nationalism, the forceful and proper responses to police brutality, followed by senate investigations, followed by industry pressure, followed immediately by a change in the direction of the bullets mentioned by rappers from their real oppressors to their brothers, followed by no more senate investigations or industry pressure, but it's been done already and anyway, I just said it.

The difference here is that rappers use their anti-black imagery to make money, and most whites just use it to "get off'. Except for Rush. He has that in common with fifty cent.

But to the whites who can't use the word it must be hell. They need to use that word. Not being able to use it is driving them crazy. Not figuratively crazy, but literally, demonstrably crazy. That's why Rush, who, without question, gets fan letters from members of the Aryan Nation, is calling the president a Nazi. People who celebrate Hitlers birthay, and who wear brown shirt uniforms and march around their shit kicker compounds, who do they listen to? It ain't Rachel Maddow.

And that's why they want to see the certificate. They don't really want to see it. What they want is for a black man to have to "come to them" and give them something that they have asked for. It's the ACT they want, not the item. Perhaps the certificate could be on a little silver tray, accompanied by a glass and a pitcher of iced tea. And the president could wear a uniform and have white hair. The proper response to anyone with such a request would rightfully be, "And just who the fuck are you?"

And now the town hall disruptions. What kind of a person disrupts meetings? Hey wait a minute, you thought I was gonna trap myself! But my little boy's dream is for me to find out that Bill McGuckin, who was so offended by my manners that he almost had a heart attack right in the OP-Ed section of the Local, is being bussed to one of these events by Dick Armey. Then I can show up and beat the livin' shit out of him. Better stay home, Bill. I can guess whose side you're on. Isn't your business tied to Papa Med-Pharma?

I think we should let this trash say the word. It may calm them down. I often say it over and over as I listen to Fox News. Like Tourettes. It drowns them out and it conveys their real meaning so much better. Try it. A charming personal reminiscence. I used to get to say it a lot, with love, when I shared an apartment with three black guys. We all were in the same situation, all living the high life and having sex with black and white women who we NEVER called any bad names EVER. Why would you ever want to call any woman a bad name who you got to fuck, weren't married to, and who had girlfriends with the same attributes? I respect the shit out women like that. Still do.

Did I leave anyone out? See, I never even mentioned Richard. Anonymous, I'm ready for your comment now. Bitch.

Little Eddie Feldman

To All My Readers

2009-08-07T09:16:00.005-04:00

Note to Jim F. and John L. This blog should be used to do what the Local has been pressured into not doing, reporting the movements of a small group of greedy Hill business people, power addicted suburban psychopaths, and their one or two manipulators, whose profiles fall into both categories, as their shenanigans are too entertaining to miss.

To be reasonable, let's compromise. For every piece about evil Obama or Crazy Pop stars, you write one about what's going on in our favorite chintz appointed halfway house. How's that?
Now back to my delightful obsession.

The desperate ones, the ones who - by their own admission - are losing money in this economy, have followed the lazy way to stop the bleeding. They believed a messiah. Rather than change their own failing business models, read the marketplace, improve their mediocre product or just pack up, they believed someone who, up 'til now, has treated them with the same regard he has for all the "help." The same regard he showed for them when he put up signs that, while in his foot-stamping-spoiled-rich-kid mind punished the Local and others, hurt the businesses of the Avenue more than anyone.

I'm talking to you Richie. I see you read this blog most every day. I know because people you trust tell me so. They also tell me that your attorneys read it. And also your Mother. So you must all be interested in what I have to say.

I have exposed your plans to pack the board with employees, tenants, friends and ass lickers to get control for your upcoming zoning and for your continued revenge on the neighborhood that does not give you the love you deserve.

Don't get me wrong, Richie, my darling, for Ass Licking, as I have said before, is something that, both figuratively and literally, is weird at first, and then, when you get used it, quite pleasant. It only becomes unsavory when you come to expect it, and demand it, as you do.

But what can we expect from someone whose fortune is built on the ravaged bodies of West Virginia coal miners, tricked out of their land by your ancestors, their mountaintops ripped to expose your fortune below, while the debris pollutes their steams for generations unborn. And all it takes for the Williamson, WV, newspaper to take your picture and thank you is a $40,000.00 scholarship for some local college students. Extrapolating that out for the early death and misery caused by the strip mining you finance, no wonder you hate the Hill. Fran O'Donnell, Greg Welsh, and the board are much more expensive, per capita, than those simple mountain folk you play tricks on.

Fashion note: Richie wore a pink shirt for one of the Mingo county photo op's. What WERE you thinking? Them thar folk ain't as broad minded as we'uns concernin' our sartorial symbolizin'.
But more about Richie later. Much more. Because I have been doing my research. On Cotiga, Tigaco, and other companies Richie uses to line his pockets with green, while lining other peoples' lungs with black. Tales of the sewing machine "salesman" - a key player in obtaining mineral rights from West Virginia Hill People, and of the King Coal Highway, of a desperate visit to the EPA in Philly, by the Governor of West Virginia, to allow mountain top removal, attempting to beat a moratorium by the pesky Obama people. That Richie's two groups of victims are both identified as "Hill People," yet separated by hundreds of miles and thousands of dollars of per capita earning is an irony that may earn it a place in a book title someday. Soon.

Richie, do you array your toy soldiers in dress rehearsals for these real life maneuvers? If so, who plays me? And do I stay erect, and if so, for how long?

This is the stuff the Local should cover. It's the stuff that gets you readers, recognition, and awards. But I guess paychecks are important too. So just be quiet, Local folks. Cash your paychecks, use your health care. And lose your souls.

Me, I ain't got no soul, so full speed ahead.

Jim Albrecht, who used to live next door to me, and who was warned by me about the weak DNA strain that governs Hill ethics, mentioned a "circle" that closed with the arrest of John Capoferri. John was part of the consortium of Hill "players" who helped get Richie his committee to mediate his dispute with the Local. John's buddy Richard Maloumian was involved too. John and Maloumian were joined at the hip back then. They used to go into the Local's office together and tell Pete how to run his newspaper, as a Real estate goniff and a rug salesman who married well have a right to do. Dick Doyle was part of the "let's get Richie his apology and he'll thank us somehow" club too. Hey fellas, what exactly did Richie do for you in return?

Now Maloumian and Capoferri aren't friends anymore. I've never known whether I should be happy or sad about the phrase "There is no honor among Thieves." Maybe I'm ambivalent about it 'cause I ain't got no soul.

Will Richie be a character witness at Johns' trial? Is it something that a call to Donna Reed can fix? Do you think he'll make that call for a guy who tried to be such a good friend to him in the past? If you can hold your breath that long, you should go work in one of the mines leased out by Richie and his Momma.

Was Richie a character witness after they led Chip Butler away? After all, Chip did sell the CHCA property to Richie, contrary to the boards' instructions. How did Richie repay that favor?
See, Richie doesn't pay back, he only leaves you the change, and he deducts the change. Coal dust kill your husband? I'll send six kids to community college, with my tax breaks included. Mountain rubble in your drinking water? I'll build a road with what's left, again with deductions, so my product can be transported. I'll screw the ungrateful Hillers by not renting my properties, and deduct those losses off my taxes too. Do any of you Keanu-bright pawns see The Matrix yet?

So Wendy, Art and the Missus, Greg and Fran, do you really think that you can trust him? I know Greg thinks he can outsmart Richie, that's in Greg's DNA. But you're stepping way up in class here kids. Greg, this guy and his family were screwing Americans out of their land and then sending them to their doom beneath that land when your people were still ducking cossacks. And Fran, your people were digging potatoes when Richie's forefathers had their hand up the back of the Irish maids' uniform while she served them Au Gratin. So read up Richie. You'll never guess who told me about your interest in my work. But try.

I. F. (Izzy) Feldman

Trickle Down Economics, Obama Style

2009-08-05T23:48:00.000-04:00

The major irony in what the Obama administration has done with the financial world is that its the ultimate in "Trickle Down Economics." I guess Ronald Reagan would be proud.

The major difference between the financial rescue programs of Roosevelt "New Deal" economists is in who were the intended beneficiaries and what the spent government money would create.

The New Dealers did not bail out the bankers and the banks wholesale as Obama did, just the opposite, they gave security to the bank's depositors in federal insurance on their money, not the bank's capital. They gave credibility back to banks by making sure no one confused an insured bank with an uninsured stockbroker, or insurance company. Now, some may not have agreed with the approach, but the Democrats in those days did target the common folks first, not the big players.

Where they did make big deals, the deals were so big and so comprehensive that their was no way they would not have long-term positive effects and benefit the largest possible number with visibility. The dam projects, the TVA, the massive federal buildings and courthouses that are still in use to this day in their original configuration were most often masterpieces of planning and execution and kept many employed for years doing things no one could deny were having a long-run impact on society. In some cases the federal government quietly backed loans to private industry if the project would have enough long-term public use and keep unemployment down in specific areas. The electrification of the Pennsylvania Railroad from New York to Washington and west to Harrisburg was such a private industry project with a public benefit. The Roosevelt administration kept its participation in that one fairly quiet as the Railroad was run by Republicans, the banks whose loans they guaranteed in Philadelphia were run by Republicans, and a significant number of workers who benefited were Republicans, as Philadelphia at that time was blue-collar Republican town.

Obama and his folks gave your big tax money to the reckless bankers and hope it will "trickle down" to John Q Public. They spread stimulus money around in the dark in projects of little permanent significance, and now put Frankford Avenue used car salesmen to shame. "Cash for Clunkers" is the most wrongheaded, environmentally unfriendly, class-demeaning piece of federal nonsense since prohibition.

Jim Foster
Philadelphia, Pa. 19119

Reviewing the Reviewer

2009-07-28T17:27:00.004-04:00

I was happy to read the opinion of the Local's newest columnist, Len Lear, on the Valley Swim Club Incident. Happy because, up 'til now, I had held my tongue about his work, out of pity. Len has been kicking around the lower levels of Philly journalism since I was a kid, and once came within hailing distance of what might have been called "promise." But that was some years ago. That past , and his innocuous position on the Local, lead me away from some pretty obvious observations.

Another reason is more delicate.

But since Len has now written what is probably the most overt expression of Racial Insensitivity I have ever read in the Local, I get to open him up a little.

Here is where the betting line is set on whether any Hiller contradicts Lens' "Walk a Mile in my shoes, Colored People" tale of the discrimination he has personally observed and experienced.
The morning line is 8 to 5 against. In the Hill tradition, which Len violated, I'll guess complete silence on the subject.

I let Len alone. He has his own little office. He writes what are supposed to be restaurant reviews for a neighborhood newspaper. When I read restaurant reviews in a neighborhood newspaper in which I am (was) a resident, I have two reasonable expectations. One, that the review, being in a newspaper whose readership outside the neighborhood was minimal, would attempt to review restaurants within that neighborhood. And two, that the reviews would try to describe the food being served in that restaurant.

But Len, perhaps hewing to the Hill tradition of thinking that its (his) influence is somewhat larger than it actually is, left the sampling and critique of Hill establishments to some other, imaginary paper. In the last twenty-three Local issues, one Hill restaurant has been reviewed.
Another unorthodox feature of Lens' reviews is the amount of words he actually devotes to the description of the food itself. He typically uses his inches to back story the life and struggles of the owner, usually getting to the food around paragraph twelve, calling the dish delicious, and then finishing off these distracting details in two or three paragraphs. Check the archives. I did. Lens' percentage of column space devoted to the description of the dishes sampled tops out at sixteen percent. The words most often used to describe the food are "delicious" and "tasty."
I always thought I knew why, and Lens latest work convinced me.

Len assumes his writing ability is above the Roget-hunting-for-flavor descriptions that he never seemed to tackle. His talent was in those compelling backstories that we all cared about so much more than finding out if someone served food we wanted to eat.

Lately, Len has jumped into the recession-news-you-can-use- business, taking special care to describe price busting offers at the establishments he writes about. The key point of going to a restaurant for the food, rather than the cost, or the compelling story of its owners has apparently been lost in his haze of two for one specials.

A few weeks ago, he reviewed Applebee's. I can't really add anything to that statement. Yes, I can. Anyone who reviews Applebee's for any reason other than as a case in point for the decline of Western Civilization should have his W-2 changed from food critic to Teenage Hillbilly Asshole.

That he described the food as "Yummy" and the unlimited salad and breadsticks as "quite tasty" makes me want to purge RIGHT NOW.

But now we see Len's ambition. Social Critic and advice giver. To Parents. Black Parents. Take your children to Libraries, museums, and lectures. Because, I guess, Len thinks that they don't do that already. Because Len, as a White Man who has never had children, feels comfortable in telling a Black Parent how to raise children. And that his experience in observing discrimination in 1963 is enough to counter a lifetime as a Black person in America.

It's the Sociological version of telling us that Applebees is "Yummy."

Len might have an issue with self identification, and that's understandable. For if ever he looked in the mirror long enough to know that his color precludes his understanding of this situation in the most profound way, he might notice that the thing on the top of his head resembles no human physical attribute, and that it is a symbol of denial as equally profound as his ignorance on the subject he has addressed.

So my advice to you Len, is to get rid of the bad wig, and devote yourself to writing about local restaurants and figure out how to work the food onto the articles before the twelfth paragraph. As for your taste, I can't help, so here's a tip - Review the Chestnut Hill Grill - It's so close to Applebees, you'll feel right at home. As for the baldness - Get over it.

Not Everything in America ...

2009-07-28T09:45:00.002-04:00

Bill Maher at Huffpost offers a new rule on which enterprises should be profit-driven. CHCA, take note.

Public Conversations ...

2009-07-26T18:58:00.007-04:00

Conversation 1.
A man in a key position of authority with a community group is talking with an acquaintance on the Avenue. Remarks that his group's key money-making enterprise lost $20,000 last month. This is within earshot of business people, community members and others. Is it wise of this person to be speaking in a public setting about this private business issue?

Conversation 2.
A man and a woman, both board members of a community group, are riding a train back to their neighborhood. Their loud conversation, overheard by a number of people on the train, includes discussions about outsourcing work at the aforementioned (See Conversation 1) enterprise as a way to cut costs. Recall that the group has already cut out 401 (k) contributions and reduced medical benefits to veterinarian levels for employees of the enterprise. Also, said organization siphons off more than $30K a year just rent from this enterprise and uses another $34K to subsidize the non-Quita Horan ($40,000 a year, thank you) employees of the non-enterprise division. In addition, the male speaker has decided that the key hire recently added to the company may have been loose in his resumé, is not what the masters of the mini-universe expected and would be better supplanted by a former employee who pissed away $100K or so several years back. Hey, guy. They don't love you in the morning. We ask, do these corporate officers understand that business conversations should not be conducted in a public setting?

Discuss: WTF? Do they not get it?

For a free subscription to Northwest Notebook, name the people.

Update and response: Because play is important to healthy living.

Where Are the True Liberals?

2009-07-22T10:13:00.002-04:00

Yes, you can still read about the atrocities on the back pages and in sideline reporting in the mainstream media. How many of you know that in the last few days another Russian investigative reporter was found in her apartment elevator with a bullet to the head and another “just to be sure?” This woman had the audacity to write - from personal experience - of atrocities in Chechnya and other probing articles about a Russian government that moves back to the “good old days of Uncle Joe” further and further while we make nice with a robot front man in a country run by a KGB operative who is a true cold war believer.

China still executes political prisoners regularly and often without trial, but just this week another large group of lawyers in China had their licenses to practice law revoked because it was determined by the national leaders that they put too much time into sensitive cases and allowed access to the foreign media. Let’s not forget how uprisings in Chinese provinces get squashed with fatalities and injuries falling into an “undetermined” category. Internet access is government controlled with the primary assistance of U. S. service providers.

Women are stoned to death with regularity in countries who we now think are worthy of “regular dialogue” and inclusion in the larger economic world and Britain is actually considering legalizing the replacement of British Common Law with Sharia Law in communities where the Muslim population is significant.

But none of this is important anymore, for we are now a “global community” and whether the message comes from the political right or left, from our Democratic president or minority Republican leadership, it is “Internationalism Uber Alles” when it comes to both foreign and domestic policy and hundreds of thousands, no millions, can be slaughtered in Africa while a handful of U.N. troops look on with direct orders they are to do nothing and make no calls for reinforcements. It makes no difference that a Marine Expeditionary Force is 20 minutes away by helicopter where the finest trained and equipped troops in the world could have stopped the majority of the bloodshed almost instantly.

The “Liberals,” as a group and the PARTY OF THE PEOPLE who long claimed support and broader concern for humanitarian international issues, now transform those interests to international trade and the movement of money. Prioritizing international human rights and trade with only those who respect them are now anachronisms from the recent past. 400,000 Americans died from my father’s generation creating the government that would lead the world by example. Another 100,000 from mine did so in Korea and Vietnam trying to implement that policy with very mixed results, but we were promised that diplomacy would replace the military approach and a more sophisticated foreign policy would do a much better job and do it without regular loss of life in the process.

INTERNATIONAL MONEY EXCHANGE is the idol now worshiped from all political and government quarters and for the most part the idealistic young activists and true believers of the postwar years have surrendered to the notion that top down power with little true democratic participation and fraudulent excuses for elections will suffice. It is now okay to move the goal posts anytime it avoids tough decisions and rationalizing the terrorist behavior of governments we do business with replaces a philosophy of self-sufficiency and self-determination first and foremost - - and trade and foreign exchange only with those whose actions match their propaganda.

We have been here before. The “Economic Miracle” of Germany 1932-36 got Hitler on the front page of Time, not once but twice. The New York Times worshiped Stalin’s “Five Year Plans” and one of their top journalists got the Pulitzer Prize for his work defending the man who is in a race with Mao for the record of how many millions were slaughtered or starved for not following their party line.

We have come full circle. Do we need to be a world financial center so badly that we will compromise our ability to produce what we need and instead export most of those needs to parts of the world that will use those dollars only to further exactly what we do not stand for? American toys and T-shirts build the Chinese Navy. Our imports fund South American dictators. International oil revenue keeps radical Muslim jihad schools funded worldwide.

Sure, we cannot be the world’s policeman, but we sure can stop the race to fund all the political and social evils we know exist with the earnings of the very same liberal Americans who claimed their philosophy would be the one that would never allow the atrocities of the past a chance at reincarnation.

Jim Foster

High Anxiety

2009-07-15T12:15:00.005-04:00

Chiller: Eulogies & fantasies for the king of pop
by John Lombardi

Dr. Cornell West of Princeton , a religion professor who still utilizes a 60s Afro, a black, three-piece preacher's suit, and the eponymous "Oh, my brothers!" when rolling into a sentence meant to override his listeners' critical faculties, was ceding the floor to Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown: " . . . not just a fashion icon, a moon-walker, MJ was striking a strong metaphysical blow against segregation of the skin and of the spirit . . . Do you recall when Michael sang 'It doesn't matter if you're black or white!' ? Brother was in flames . . ."

Dr. Dyson, a younger, beefier sociology lecturer, sharing the spotlight on The Tavis Smiley Show on PBS a few days after MJ died, grabbed the stick like a relay runner: "Too quick to jump to the controversial tip! When Reagan died, you didn't have the media discussing the president's faux pas! Uh-uh! They gave him a pass! There was a moratorium on criticism. But with Michael, Fox News and everybody else were beating on the body immediately -- Oxycontin! Demerol! Bald head! 112 pounds! Taking away from his achievement! There's time for hard analysis later, but with the man barely gone, why is it necessary to diminish? What do you say, Tavis?"

Smiley, a big, handsome, healthy Hoosier, now established in Hollywood as a kind of black Charlie Rose, simply said: "Politics."

Which got West off again: "He was the intellectual emblem of blues hegemony. He was Fred Astaire, James Brown. Nietzsche, Stagolee -- a genius. And geniuses suffer for us all! They don't have happy lives! They carry the weight. They dealing with the heights and depths we more mortal men can't even jump up high enough to see, or dive down low enough to dig! Jackie Wilson! John Coltrane! Ornette Coleman! Nina Simone! Dostoevsky! Beethoven!"

"MJ altered the terms of the debate!" pronounced Dr. Dyson, edging back in like a rapper in a "cutting" contest, or like Don King hyping a fight. "He was adorned in an Afro-halo of High Possibilities and Deep Griefs. When [pre-Thriller] Rolling Stone wouldn't put Mike on the cover, he told 'em: 'You're gonna need me some day!' When MTV refused to play his music, he did all those Thriller & Bad videos that made MTV! They should have called it Michael TV! He engendered multi-millions, not only in CD's, DVD's, live performances and songwriting royalties, he created the integrated audience! Who do you think did more to pave the way for the non-racial U.S., the multi-racial world? Some politician? Or MJ?"

West swore that it was time for blacks to reclaim Michael. Dyson insisted it was whites who'd turned their backs on him, even after his 1995 child molester charges were dismissed. Causing all his pain and motivating whatever clinical gloom might have led him to abandon Neverland Ranch & cloister himself in Bahrain, and then England, where racist Fleet Street hacks were merciless, driving him out with "Jack-O!" headlines. After he was booed offstage at the Earl's Court Arena in London in 2006, in what was supposed to be his first comeback after the pedophile charges, he is said to have holed up for a week in a hotel, drinking steadily -- new for a man who'd spent millions on plastic surgery and weekly skin-lightening sessions with Dr. Arnold Klein of Beverly Hills (the purported real father of his first two kids, Prince and Paris, with his nurse Debbie Rowe as their mother ); who'd slept in a hyperbaric glass chamber to slow aging; ate only skinless broiled chicken and lettuce, to prevent weight gain & arterial clogging ; dressed himself and the children in medical beekeeper costumes to ward off paparazzi, germs and sunlight . . .

But according to these two, and they were on PBS -- you couldn't even think about the weird stuff. As MJ's spokesman/brother Jermaine tearfully told Matt Lauer of NBC, on the lawn in front of the Jackson family compound in Encino : "People weren't ready for him. He was too good. So God took him back." To show MJ's self-valuation, he'd had a painting of "The Last Supper" hung on his wall in Neverland that showed him at the center of a table, surrounded by "apostles": Abe Lincoln, JFK, Einstein, Little Richard, Elvis, Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney.

The naive grandiosity, the tearful and sometimes malevolent denials of surgery addiction, prescription drug addiction and pedophilia, his attempts to "become", say, Diana Ross, or Elizabeth Taylor, his self-description as "Peter Pan", point to a more twisted psychology than his fans or handlers were equipped to deal with.

MJ and his brothers have recounted their father Joe's driven cruelty in turning them into a marketable black act in the 70s and 80s.. They lived at first in a battered saltbox in Gary, Indiana, where dad was a sometimes unemployed steelworker and frustrated musician . On camera, Michael told Martin Bashir of ABC: "He used his belt. Sometimes an electric cord. If you didn't get the steps or words right. Not with me as much, 'cause I was always better . . . But with some of my brothers, like Marlon . . . He was brutal." Joe would also taunt Michael about his shortness and "fat nose". As a result, MJ lost his childhood -- "Jermaine and Tito and them were older -- but all I knew was working."

So he began to change himself. By Thriller, 1983, he had a thinner nose and a lighter brown skin, so that he looked more like George Chakiris in West Side Story than himself. By Bad in 1989, having sold more units in six years than Elvis or the Beatles (59 million on Thriller; 28 million on Bad), his nose was even thinner (one surgeon called it "endstage crucified"), his skin whiter, and he had a a new strongly molded jaw and dimpled chin. It's been reported that he's spent hundreds of millions on his travels, lawyers, surgeries, homes -- Neverland cost a million a month to maintain; his last mansion in Holmby Hills, paid for by his last management aggregation, called Colony Capital, $100,000 a month to rent, plus $150,000 a month to keep his physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, constantly in attendance. Murray was with him, though allegedly out of the room, when he lapsed into unconsciousness June 25th.

He'd been begging his staff and one of his nurses for Diprivan, used sparingly in hospitals to start anesthesia, but dangerous . One warned him: "Michael, if you take too much of that stuff, you ain't gonna wake up!" (His brother Randy had helped save him in 2004.) But from his videos, shot at the Staples Center, where he was rehearsing a slo-mo, militaristic version of "This Is It", what was to have become his second, 50-show "comeback" at 02 Stadium in London on July 13th, drugs were already affecting him. Uncharacteristically, he was dressed in gray, the frustrated if spastically brilliant, sometimes balletically on-point dance moves of Thriller and Bad subliminated in flat-footed line-marches and salutes. The choked, manic singing of his biggest hits was slurred to the infant's refrain:

"All I wanna say is
They don't really care about us!"

The secret of MJ's success. Adults vs. children. Better to die than let them win.

His estate is valued at a half-billion dollars, and 2.6 million songs have been downloaded since his death. A billion people watched his funeral celebration on TV. A death photo, taken in the 911 ambulance, sold in the high six figures.

Writers Respect One Another

2009-07-12T17:09:00.007-04:00

As a semi-responsible journalist, I followed up my first person account of Buzz Bissinger's end-of -presentation Snowden statement with a call to the speaker himself. I had accurately recounted my time at the event and I had accurately recounted the statement itself. But I wanted to get any backstory and clarification on Mr. B's experience. We had a pleasant conversation.

Mr. Bissinger told me that the statement was glib, and in jest. Knowing his style, I had felt so at the time. Mr B told me that he retracted his statement soon after, and should not have said it. He wishes no harm to anyone. To clarify, as his statement was worded, the death of Mr. Snowden might well have come from natural causes at an advanced age. So violence is not a component to be addressed.

But Mr. Bissinger was clear that he regrets the statement and I believe him. Toothpaste and tubes being what they are, and speaking as a man who licked varnish on a live television show once, I know the depth of his regret. He added that his entire presentation was peppered with humor and its attendant exaggeration. I get that too. My work, including my extensive reporting on Mr. Snowden's activities in West Virginia and the Hill have been laced with humor. That, and the law regarding public figures keep me out of court. And although I have never wished him ill in print, in our one extensive meeting, I did suggest that he sell his properties in 19118 and leave.

So the lesson here is clear. Context and style. They count. But my Mom used to say something about words said in jest, and she ought to know about such things, because she called me a bastard almost every day. So to those who soiled themselves following a silly comment, lighten up. And next year get the guy who writes the "Thomas the Train" books.

Oh What a Night!

2009-07-12T12:29:00.007-04:00

The Scene: Snowden's McGarrity Showroom
The Time: Saturday July 11, 8:55 PM
The Event: The Capstone of The Bowman Properties/Chestnut Hill Business Associations' Book Festival

At the most heavily attended Festival Event, and with the derelict Bowman property filled to capacity, Buzz Bissinger, Book Festival Headliner was winding up his presentation. I was there, in the back. Standing room only. I was ready to ask Mr. B, nearby resident, what he thought of Richard Snowden, primary financier of the festival, owner of McGarrity, and Principal in COTIGA, a firm that has leased West Virginia land for strip mining for more than a century, and lately a despoiler-turned benefactor-turned-Positively Chestnut Hill SugarDaddy. I thought, as a fellow journalist, Mr B might have an opinion. Perhaps we could even discuss my ongoing work on this subject.

Earlier in the day, I had asked a similar question at a sparsely attended panel discussion group on non-fiction, at the same venue. When I did so, two-count 'em-two business association ladies, (whose names I can never remember), sprung up simultaneously and said,"you don't have to answer that question" to the panel, a group of mature, professional women who seemed as if they could speak for themselves.

Too bad a Panel Discussion on Censorship was not scheduled for the weekend. maybe next time, if books on paper are still being published by then.

As it turns out, I didn't have to ask Buzz the question. He answered it in his final remark.
Before he did, I scanned the room.

There was Greg Welsh, ostensible organizer of the event, whose restaurant is listed second, after Bowman, as sponsor. Greg seemes to have a full time position, directly beneath Richard. Greg was looking around, beaming at their mutual triumph. "Finally, a capacity crowd, for our front-page-of-the Local Star Attraction!"

Although I couldn't see Richard, so many of the other organizers were there that, when a policeman showed up minutes after my arrival, I sensed something more than serendipity.

As Buzz was winding up, speaking of his love, and his hopes for Philadelphia, I began to raise my hand to ask my question.

And then he said it. In his final remark, concerning the future of The City and the neighborhood in which he and his family lives and loves, Buzz said, "And Snowden Should Die!"

"AND SNOWDEN SHOULD DIE!"

Wait. Say it over to yourself. I didn't say it. The Principal Speaker of the Bookfair sponsored by Snowden said it. What followed was a sound I had never heard, but read about, before.

It's the sound that rises up over a battlefield after the first deadly volley.

A great gasp of surprise, followed by a moan of pain by the fallen, as if their mortality had, up until that point, been a fact denied, and then accepted, all within the span of a second.

It was a sound heard at Gettysburg, at Verdun, and at Balaclava, at the moment of imagined triumph for all causes doomed, not by circumstance, but by the hubris of their protagonists.

I looked around the room. Greg looked as if his annual prostate exam had started early, and he had forgotten to fast for the day. The CHBA ladies all looked as if they were posing for Munch. Again I looked for the Middle Aged Boy-King, but I couldn't pick him out-these Anglo Saxon gene pool gatherings make discrete ID's difficult.

The closed glass door, (and what ARE the Maximum Capacity and Emergency Exit Rules for that building?) rattled as the air simultaneously rushed out of more than a hundred previously pleased-as-punch attendees.

And I applauded. I also shouted, "You know he owns this building!" Buzz replied,"I don't care."
That was good enough for me. I left before the organizers got a chance to edit the tape that recorded the event, or if Buzz had any aftermath to deal with. Besides, I had a Limerick Contest to get to.

I also didn't see any Local reporters, although they may have been there. On Monday, I will ask Pete if he had anyone there and if he intends to report the story. I will ask him if, in lieu of my response to Walter Sullivan's attack on the Chestnut Hill Residents' Association, if I may furnish my first hand account. Whether any of this makes the Local should be seen as a Litmus test of its independence.

My conclusion is obvious to anyone not so completely divorced from the ethics of the world outside 19118, that they think "parochial' applies only to those attending Our Mother of Consolation. What response did you expect from such a man? He has examined evil and corruption for a living. He knows it when he sees it. He sees the situation clearly. He, unlike the CHBA or Greg or Fran O'Donnell, or the Howes, or Wendy Kern, doesn't need Richards' help to earn his living, or to keep his kids out of the Public Schools.

I don't know what the aftermath of Mr. Bissinger's statement will be. I can't predict the extent or the character of the cover-up. But there will be one. Unless we take the words of the Hills' most respected journalist, by the Business Association's own admission, to heart.

Don't hold your breath.

And Buzz, if want to see my notes on Snowden and COTIGA, e-mail me.

Self-Edit

2009-07-11T13:26:00.002-04:00

I think "coal miner" should replace" coal baron" in that last one, right?

These are easy

2009-07-11T13:01:00.004-04:00

Dick Snowden owns more than he oughter
Just bought an election day slaughter,
Now the Chestnut Hill Local,
Will not be so vocal,
'Cause it's owned by a coal barons' daughter

Another

2009-07-11T12:58:00.002-04:00

McNally was never a quitter,
But other bars make her quite bitter,
She used Board position,
To fight competition,
But Joe's face still looks like a Schmitter

More Limericks

2009-07-11T12:53:00.002-04:00

Walt Sullivan recently chose,
To write "the emperor has clothes"
We've heard that he said it,
But we've never read it,
'Cause his prose makes the populus dose

Limericks that may not make the cut

2009-07-11T10:34:00.004-04:00

A property owner named Snowden
Needed zoning for buildings he's ownin'
He took up a collection
And bought an election
Now we'll see his erection explodin'

Where's Walter?

2009-07-08T18:41:00.003-04:00

Gee, after my last response to Walter Sullivan, he hasn't written a thing on this blog. I guess he's satisfied with his regular Local column. I would comment on them at length, but I haven't been able to get through one yet. Anybody else?

And hey, look for me at the big Snowden Book Fair this weekend. Even though I'm a published author, with a book chosen as national Reader's Club Selection, (Art Howe-any Books?)no one contacted me to participate. I guess I'll just show up. I wonder what the tax advantage is regarding holding a community event in a vacant auto showroom? Richie Rich is always thinking. Every one of my limericks to be presented at the Hill Tavern on Saturday night will be about you, my Darling. But maybe one about Dina too. What rhymes with "sociopath"?

Predictions ...

2009-07-07T14:19:00.003-04:00

For you folks who think I can only predict what will happen in 19118, here is the plan for the Killa from Wasilla.

1. Take a 6 month vacation while America forgets some of your more ridiculous actions, and while someone finishes writing your book. Stay in Alaska. Do cover story for Parents Magazine, Redbook, etc., with all the kids.

1a. Take meetings for your pundit position/talk show. Fox is the obvious choice, but don't sneer at syndication. Much of your constituency cannot afford cable. And look at what Rush does with AM - a medium one step above the telegraph. Commute to Washington. Call Realtors. News of the meetings will break. Do cover story for Broadcasting Today.

2. Take a few easy six figure paydays from the usual suspects-Think tank division. AEI, etc-Kristol will set up the meetings while he fantasizes about you talking off your glasses. Pay off legal debts. Move to suburban D.C.. Rent.Do cover story for National Review.

3. Take the six figure cross country speaking paydays as you re-acquaint the American public with your new persona, and the publication of the book. Do the Talk Show circuit, INCLUDING Letterman. Do cover story for People.

4. Begin the pundit/talk show. Move to the Upper East Side. Buy. Do cover story for New York magazine.

5. Watch the poll numbers. If the negatives fall below 20, move back to D.C. Do cover story for Time & Newsweek.

6. Quit TV. Declare for 2012 Prez. Run a diciplined, populist, orthodox campaign and lose to next-in-line/sacrificial lamb Romney in the primaries. Save war chest.

7. Romney loses the general to the sitting President. Be a good sport. You now have the inside track for 2016.

8. Beat an aging Hillary.

9. Stock Camp David with moose and salmon.

Win Big Prizes Through Ridicule

2009-06-29T12:04:00.003-04:00

Ed Feldman announces a new contest! Win a genuine Furniture Guys T-Shirt! Yes, Ed's award winning TV shows (just like Art Howe's Pulitzer) type T-Shirt, featuring Graven Images of its two Producer-Writer-Hosts, Ed Feldman and Joe L'Erario, identical to the ones worn all over the US, Canada and Europe by thousands of fans, Heads of State and Strippers, can be YOURS!

Here's all you have to do. Write a piece for this here blog.

Subject - "How Embarrassing is the Chestnut Hill Community Association?"

You can use personal experiences, factual third person reportage, or heresay. I bet you have stories that even I haven't heard! And if all you can contribute is a creative treatment of what we already know, that's OK too!

Because it's all ART. Make us laugh, cry, or raise a single eyebrow in typically understated Hill Fashion! No word limit, but bear in mind the Walter Sullivan effect, too long and I start to think about all the free porn I could be watching.

All entries will be commented on by the Usual Gang of Idiots, but, since it's MY T-Shirt, I will make the FINAL RULING! Just like Walter gets to do! I'll even sign the shirt, so you can wear it to the next Snowden Daisy Chain at the Library!

In the Event of a Tie-don't worry-I've Got Several! In the Event of an Anonymous Winning Entry. You'll have to prove Authorship. Don't worry, we'll figure it out!

So get to writing kids! Or I'm gonna have to have to post 'em myself under aliases, and don't need another shirt. Yeah, but if I already have the shirts......never mind. Hey. They're 100% cotton!

Ed ( COME ON DOWN!) Feldman

Be Careful What You Wish For ...

2009-06-27T13:07:00.004-04:00

Ed Note: June 2. Part of this post was not copied when uploaded. This is the complete post.

The word on the street at CHCA election time is that the reason the Positively Chestnut Hill types picked Walter, arranged the votes, and congratulated him in advance was that they wanted someone "who could control a meeting and deal with Recko Foster and Feldman."

Well, all those robots who voted as they were told must now be obedient children and take orders from the one so sure of himself he has already issued his first "Ruling" - - as if a Judge on a high level court, not the elected leader of a democratic organization where personal commitment, thinking, contributing and voting were to be the principle guidelines.

But of course history has proven that when we have weak minds and lazy citizens they get the government they deserve. Let us never forget that the most popular "elected" leader in history was Adolph Hitler who for years had a 95% popularity rating with the citizens.

Zu Befehl, Herr Kapitän.

O'Donnell introduces a motion to create a CHCA committee to deal with the vacancies in commercial real estate in Chestnut Hill. Snowden himself objects and the reason is that any meeting held under CHCA by-laws would have to be public and that the public learning what they are doing in such a meeting would be undesirable

Walter to rescue. He first asks if the Business Association has any such requirement for public meetings - -and the answer is no. He then motions that the Business Association create such a committee and he would then appoint several members of the CHCA to that committee.

Motion passed. Gee that was easy. See what you can achieve when a rich martinet lunatic teams up with a malleable lawyer to run a board of syncophants.

Sullivan's ruling to the board:

It is my ruling that Bylaws II E 1 c applies to all Meetings including of all Committees in requiring Notice normally published in the Local "at least seven days in advance of the meeting." It is my ruling that that provision applies to all Committees, including even those which may be conducted entirely in executive session, such as the Awards Committee and the Nominating Committee. Please consider this not as the opinion of one individual but as a formal ruling.

It is further my opinion that it is generally not desirable that Meetings of Committees be conducted in a private home, no matter how pleasant the environment and how gracious the host. Because the Bylaws are not explicit on this point and because the Board therefore may need to act on this question, please at this point do not consider this as a formal ruling.

Whether that ruling and that opinion apply to Meetings of the CHCF I shall consider.

Walt
Walter J. Sullivan

Jim Foster

The Morning Line ...

2009-06-25T11:23:00.003-04:00

by Ed (Nicely-Nicely) Feldman

Track: Chestnut Hill Downs
Conditions: Ridiculous

Horse - Trainer - Finish - Odds
Phil (in the blank) LeCalsey - CHCA - Out of the Money - 5-3
History/Tip: In what will be termed as a cost cutting move, Phil's race card will now be filled by efficient and less expensive filly Noreen Spota. Phil's partner, Pat Moran, said he was "appalled" by the '08 election. Pat's comments apparently did not sit well with head trainer Dina "the (you fill in this one, kids)" Hitchcock, and Pat was recently scratched from the executive committee and has resigned from the entire CHCA race season.

Horse - Stable - Trainer - Finish - Odds
Pete's Hope - Local - CHCA/Snowden - August - Even Money
History/Tip: Pete bit Snowden back in '01 and Richard's memory is Legendary. Discussions now center around whether Pete should be put down or be allowed to continue to race, if he responds well to the bridle. "Richard the Dick" is holding fast to the former. Those who care about appearances want to keep him on, in order to seem humanitarian to the larger racing community. But Pete has a stable mate now, and he's being groomed to step up in class.

Horse - Trainer - Finish - Odds
Larry "the Hoch" berger - CHCA - Win - Even Money
History/ Tip: At the May stable meeting, your humble handicapper asked Larry if, during discussions about his new job with board members, he was asked if he could take over editorial duties at the Local. He said he was asked "hypothetically" if he could. Then, backing up like a quarter horse, added that he wasn't asked to "do it", but only if "he could" That's good enough for me Lar! You see, Larry's feed is more than his trainers' budget allows at present.

Part of Larry's job, as jockey Mark Keintz stated at the same meeting, was to find ways for the paper to save money. What better way than to take Pete's reigns and take the daily double all by yourself! After the meeting, Pete asked me how I knew to ask Larry that question. I told him that it was an obvious one, but what tipped me off was junior stable boy Bob Rossman's effusive introduction of the new associate publisher. In a two minute speech, Bob said that Larry's job would be to "oversee all aspects of the Local EXCEPT THE EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT" four different times.

As well known tout of yore Willie Shakes might have said, "methinks that gent doth protest too much" and I wanted the real feedbox noise.

Horse - Co-Trainers - Finish - Odds
Earl of Snowden - Cotiga/ Andorra Stables - When the Coal Runs Out - Very
History/Tip: Always bides his time and usually comes from behind. Long shot for Stud. Has unlimited feed money. Next race; Height variances to be run through committees without notifiying neighbors on WestGravers. Luckily, any opposition in the field has been told to clear the track for an open run to the finish line. Only possible opposition comes from Pete's Hope, who may be scratched by then. This handicapper is still trying to run down rumors about some recent geldings that are taking place at the Local's Stables. Could P. H. now be a soprano?

That's all I have time for now race fans! Remember to watch where you step, 'cause it sure gets piled high around where the thoroughbreds roam!

A Conversation About Hill Real Estate ...

2009-06-24T13:27:00.004-04:00

A Phillyblog post (Ed Note: the Phillyblog site has been erratic Wednesday afternoon - off and on) features a discussion on Bowman Properties adventures in Chestnut Hill. It's a chance to participate in a quiet conversation about real estate on the Hill (with a few detours through CHBA/CHCAland).

The Undressing of a President

2009-06-24T12:16:00.004-04:00

by Theodore H. Feldman

Now we see it. Now that we have lured Walter Sullivan into the open, away from( some) of his ridiculous rhetorical flourishes that add nothing, save cover, to his discourse, additionally providing cover for those who employ him and screw the Local, we see it. He answered my suggestions as to what he could do as President to make us feel that he is not a tool, not a fool, and not an asshole.

He has provided substantive proof that he is all three, and has done it so amateurishly that my brief hiatus of treating him as an adult, as someone who could be treated with respect is now over. I never doubted the result for a moment, but I gave him a chance . But he exceeded my expectations. He blew it with crawling colors.

He responded to my suggestions thusly:

1. To come clean about Snowden's involvement in the "Positively Chestnut Hill" Slate - Walter said it "must have cost little, one ad in the Local and some nice and useless buttons-if Richard paid for them, it must amounted to nothing."

I can't find out what the buttons cost - Jackie, Snowdens assistant, won't tell me, but there were four ads in the Local, two half pagers at $520.00 apiece and two at $117.00 apiece. That's $1274.oo. I'm gonna throw in the $50.00-a-pop CHCA memberships he bought for nothing, his people are too scared to talk.

Walter, couldn't you even look at the Local and count the ads ? Or did you bother to do anything at all to respond accurately?

All communication for the slate came out of Snowden's Bowman Property's office, by paid employees, except when Greg "The Shill" Welsh ladled his bullshit to a recumbent Local reporter, saving any Snowden mention for the Inky. Richard, give Greg a big wet one. The Local knew the connection, it took calls and e-mails from Bowman about the Slate, but wrote nothing. Pete, meet Greg.

2.Regarding conflicts of interest: The new conflict of interest Policy, to be signed by all board members states that if a member has received direct or indirect remuneration, or gifts or favors in excess of $150.00, then that constitutes a conflict of interest. Would $1274.00 be more or less than $150.00?

It further names any member having any compensatory arrangement with any organization with which the organization (CHCA) is conducting a negotiation or arrangement as having a conflict of interest.

Walter, in an astonishing display of legal and evidentiary ignorance, states that only Richard must recuse himself. Is Walter additionally ignorant to the fact that one Positively candidate is Richard's tenant, that her husband was elected too (the Howes), that Wendy Kern, fellow supplicant does architectural work for Richard? I wonder if she helped to design his "Ghetto Store" signs - or was that Jane Piatrowski?

Even if they deny the ad buy, you can't miss these other serfs to the Snowden feifdom.
Walter, you idiot, you're blowing the easy ones.

None of Snowden's electoral vassals can discuss or vote on the variances that he got them elected to pass, according to this policy. Ironic, ain't it? But if Walter doesn't know any of this, how the hell is he gonna get Irony?

3. & 4. Walter claiming ignorance and "denying the premise" about threats to the Local is even dumber. From the illiterate Joe Pie, to the thuggish yet cowardly Remus, to the small timer Howe, the Local's bullying by those from outside the profession to those outside the city has been reported on and known to everyone not in a coma for years.

If Walter had only copped a plea that all this interference was actually "help" and that the Local employees, or me, or all the people who have written to the Local about the exact same thing were mistaken, or wrong , or stirred up by the axis of evil (Feldman-Foster-Recko), then I would have had to recount all of the incidents - again, as I have in print in the Local, without contradiction from the board. But Walter just denies "the premise."

Does the name Jim Sturdivant ring a bell? At a board meeting Walter gave Jim this advice - too late, as he had already quit - about telling those who were telling him how to do his job to" get the hell out of his office." I was there Walter - I heard you say it. Why would you give someone this advice and then "deny the premise?"

Walter, did they tell you that this non existant pressure has already wound up being handled by lawyers once, and that another complaint is coming?

Maybe that's why lawyers other than yourself are getting these jobs.

5. About my demand for a forensic accounting. Walter responds by asking, "what exactly do I mean" by that phrase. Walter, are the only cards in your deck marked "ignorant?"

There isn't a board member of your vintage that does not know of the two-year teeth pulling extravaganza of the SOC, then its' remnants, trying to get the board and its' trustees to follow its' own rules and finally reveal how it's been using its money like Michael Jackson used Webster.
It was written about in the Local, and discussed at about a dozen meetings. When the board pled poverty, we got a 100% donor. They still refused. Come on Walter, don't you remember? You were there. Didn't you read the Oversight Committee report? The PA State Attorney General has.

Which brings me to:

6. Since we now know that Walter has not read the Oversight Committees report, for it covered the reasons for a forensic audit that Walter now wants me to tell him about, Walter states that "no such concerns will arise" during his administration, and if they did, he would appoint such a committee "in a heartbeat."

This is the capper, my friends. The Dirigible Mooring Mast on that Empire State of Ignorant Responses to my impassioned pleas for honest governance.

I must admit here that I expected Walter to use his usual smokescreen to cloud the issues and nickel and dime me into some reasonable expectation of his future leadership.

But, although it may surprise some people to read this, for they know my low expectations of you already, this is a new low.

Walter, Oversight Committees, any committee observing and reporting conduct of board members cannot be unilaterally created by an individual whose position and conduct may well be the subject of the committees ' investigation. It doesn't work that way, Walter. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY WALTER.

Such a committee is "independent." If it is only created if you see a need, then it is "dependent" on your opinion of it. Do you see the difference in the two words?

Must I speak to you as I would a child? Either you really are as ignorant as these answers make you seem, or you have been told to deny everything so childishly that the only research I needed to expose you was a single, anonymous call about ad prices to the Local. Either way, you are unqualified to captain the Good Ship Lollipop, let alone be charged with task of covering up for an organization so corrupt that people all over the City, the Region, and thanks to..... me, all over the Country simuntaneously laugh and shudder as I report on its workings.

So farewell Walter, I can't even pretend to take you seriously any more. You're just not worthy. This is why all those who have really run things for so long keep their mouths shut. And why the new order will follow suit. If they spoke and gave their "reasons" for their actions, they would be as exposed as you were. Remember Dina's "feminine intuition"? Absurd on so many levels, all the way down to chromosomal.

As I said about you originally, you're there to draw the fire, an easy target. But they know the truth about your abilities and your role in their little theatrical troupe. You're Falstaff. Someone to laugh at. But the battles are elsewhere, and you're not a part of them. I won't ask you any more questions. This is why W didn't hold press conferences. God, but these allusions are obvious.

Ed ( Fish in a barrel )Feldman

Neurotics Anonymous ...

2009-06-21T00:10:00.002-04:00

If there is one central location where a self-help group could be formed from almost any random number of citizens it would be Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. Now I hail from adjacent Mt. Airy, which some have described as an assembly of weirdos, fruit loops, extremists and malcontents, (I will admit to the latter category) but few there are in denial of their self-directed pathways.

Not only do residents of Chestnut Hill lie to each other, it is de rigeur to lie to oneself to reinforce the myth that the emperor of the moment has a functioning brain, let alone clothes. Myth after myth is laid upon falsehood after falsehood, with the circle only growing smaller and smaller in the Northwest corner as the community looks more and more like something from the twilight zone.

Fahrenheit 451 could be filmed again here in color on any given day, as they have burned all the books, and the library is just a meeting place for the CHCA, which should be renamed Neurotics Anonymous. Despite being Philadelphia's community built on money and power, their affiliated trust fund is run by folks who can't read a financial statement, and are near running out of inheritance.

Denial reinforces all, and this once-respected institution (CHCA) produces one falsified financial report after another and everyone salutes it in scenes reminiscent of the film classic King of Hearts where everyone becomes what the moment requires, for thinking past the day is much too difficult to handle.

Living the lie and hoping desperately for the return to what never was in the first place is the mission of the moment, and lots of new and old Hillers have signed up, put on the uniform and are ready to face the enemy. But what they do not realize is that Pogo was right many years ago when he stated - - - "We have met the enemy - -- and he is us".

Jim Foster

Chestnut Hill Yokels ...

2009-06-16T09:21:00.009-04:00

Phantom of the Local
by John Lombardi

Back in February, rumors began bumping shoulders again: 'They're gonna off Pete at last, even though they haven't been able to vote him out.' 'They're bringing in a new publisher, to assume the business worries of the Local . This guy is a killer, might of been in Iraq, family heavy in the news biz.' ' Then: 'He's an advertising director!, no war chops, that was another guy Rob Remus loved!' 'Maybe he's got a brother in news . . .?' Then: 'He can help revivify the Germantown Ave. business district , because he'll help shunt all the Bad News Boys -- Feldman, Foster, Recko , etc. -- off into the info reservation, isolate them completely like the Cavalry did the Sioux!' 'Yeah, put 'em in the Germantown Newspapers group that Jim Foster started, (taking even Scott Alloway out of the Local mix), restricting 'em to Northwest Notebook, minimizing their visibility . . .' News was on the run, the way Gen. Phil Sheridan and Gen. George Custer got after Crazy Horse & Sitting Bull . . .

Through the spring election, though control squeezed tighter & gloomier, nobody was actually canned. Pete slunk around like the Ghost of Editing Past, bequeathing a News Editor job to Joel ('Self-Referential') Hoffman , the apple of the Temple Journalism Dept's eye, because the Exec Committee objected to some goofy story Len Lear snuck into LocaLife, and Pete hates confrontation . . . so he figured he'd let a Deputy handle things next time . . . A regular Pat Garrett.

Meanwhile, no reportage about the new dude was allowed in the Local, and curiously, none appeared in the Germantown Newspapers or the Northwest Notebook, either. The publisher or associate publisher -- even his title was folded close to Dina Hitchcock's thorny breast -- was a forbidden topic. (Like what really happened between Jimmy Pack and Uncle Remus that chilly day in November?) But finally some facts oozed out between Hitch's bloody claws: The Delaware County Daily Times had been the new guy's home for 2 1/4 years! A little daily down near the Delaware line. As working class as Gloucester, New Jersey. The man -- Larry Hochberger, it turned out -- had been Classified Advertising Director -- not Display Ads, where you occasionally come in contact with other living, breathing beings, like, say, Sonia Leounes does . . . Classified, which is computer-based and as hypo-allergenic as a web-site, was Hochberger's stage, where he reportedly sold ads on an e-mail plan as effective as Pizza Hut's . . . It was bloodless but profitable -- or at least the CHCA Exec Committee who hired him thought so:

'Won't it be swell to get such smarts going on the Hill?'

I did my best to engage Mr. Hochberger. Called him up last week at the Times and got this bitten-off exchange: "Who'd ja say you were with?"

"Northwest Notebook, Mr. Hochberger."

"Well, can't talk now. I'm still working for my old company!"

"Right, but could we arrange a few minutes after work or on the weekend?"

"Try not to work weekends. Try me Monday at the Local."

"Any time that might be best?

"No, no. Can't say. Gotta go!"

"Well, thank y--"

Click!!

Sources from the Local itself have all but dried up on these matters. (Everyone knows who you were anyway, but let that pass). Word was down -- like it had come down from the Exec Committee after Rob Remus's tag team match with Jimmy that NO mention of their "disagreement" should be exposed to reporters, lest they invent crappy spin. But through heavy scrounging, two days before the Official Story comes out in the Local, I was able to learn from people in or formerly in CHCA, who would know, and from Hochberger's old employers -- who would only speak on deep background -- that "Hochy," as the troops called him, is average-height, rumpled like a news-guy, in his 50s and as determined as a staple gun: He wanted, for example, $75,000. CHCA offered $54,000, and came up steadily to $74,000 through the dead of the winter. They'd already formed plans last fall through a "fact-finding" trio -- Dina, Mark Keintz, Rob Remus -- to do some salary-cutting, and started with the grotesque ousting of Jimmy Pack (which he played right into, and made easy for them.) That saved a fast $32,000 a year. Next the spotlight is on bookkeeping operations, where, it is rumored , the ill Lois Thompson, Claudia Bordo and/ or Joan Forjohn may be up for the knife (two out of three, it's said in salary ranges from the high 20s to the low 30s). Those would technically cover Hochy's new bite, but in an economy like this, other possible cuts include Pete's $54,000, and Community Manager Philip LeCalsey's salary, said to be $53,000.

According to one Byzantine theory, which seems of a piece with the great recurring Richard Snowden Legend, the real-estate-and-coal-mine-meany, backer of the current ruling clique in CHCA/CHBA, plans to pressure Hochy to gradually assume the editorial direction of the Local as well as its business-side publishing work. Pete's salary would then be downsized by half, and he would be reduced to a kind of Managing Editor at, say, $27,000 to $30,000 a year. Since even someone with his demonstrated pliability ( he didn't insist on being in on the "fact-finding" trio's formative plans; permitted them to halve the ad director's commissions without a squeak; let them push his old pal Pack out the door; allowed Ron Recko's Oversight Committee to go down without a fight; gradually forbade reformer Jim Foster and radical critic Ed Feldman space in the Local's pages (while denying it ), & himself mercilessly rationalized the Local 's dumbing-down ) -- couldn't be expected to put up with such mendacity forever. The current forecast is that Pete will be gone sometime in dusty August, while his social and financial betters are cooling off in Bar Harbor, or over on Lake Geneva.

*
I tried Hochy again on Monday the 15th, his first day of work at the Local. Same electric pencil-sharpener replies:

" I've indicated to you that I don't want to answer your questions," he said. "This is for some kind of story, right?"

"Well it's for my column, but you told me to call you back today, when we spoke Friday."

"Don't remember that. Very busy . . ."

"You were Classified Ad Director of the Delaware County Daily Times, weren't you? "

"Yes, but . . ."

"How does that prepare you for a position as publisher of an old weekly that's clearly dying?"

Hochberger laughed dismissively: "Not dying! Good brand name!"

"How are you going to beef up your 6300 circulation? After 50 years? Think positive business stories are all people want to read?"

"I'm busy. I need to get back to work."

"A few minutes for a couple of questions?"

"Sorry."

Click!
*
What we know about Mr. Hochberger is that he's rude, unimaginative, has a family that he thinks the world of, and tends to see life as a business problem. Therefore if Pete and Sonia "perform" up to the standards he's promised Tolis Vardakis, Hitchcock, Keintz , and presumably Walter Sullivan he will enforce, those two have a chance of surviving. The true weirdos left in the office, who are few indeed at this point, are in for a rougher row to hoe.

Newspapers, when they were great, were outposts for free spirits who traded financial security for the chance of getting off some true insights a few dozen times a year, that made their lives, and those of their readers, worth living. The idea of speaking truth to power once in a while, even if they couldn't make it stick, is what Charles A. Dana, Stephen Crane, Upton Sinclair, Frank Harris, James Agee, Ernie Pyle and so many lesser-knowns, did for this country.

The Chestnut Hill Local was a good newspaper at several points in its medium-length life. It hasn't been for several years now, & I'm sorry to see it end like this.

We're the Crazy Aunts and Uncles

2009-06-14T20:18:00.002-04:00

Firedog Lake has a great post well worth reading. Democracy is local as well as national.

A Revolution of Crazy Aunts and Uncles
By: Glenn W. Smith Sunday June 14, 2009 9:30 am

If we want an extravagant democracy, we should live together like one another's crazy aunts and uncles.

Conjure someone recognized as a relation. But this relation is also a unique and maybe dangerous "Other" whose otherness comes with seductive and liberating promise. Such a person reminds us that the human heart is always too big for the ribs of law and etiquette we hide it beneath for safety's sake. In a democracy, shouldn't that describe us all?

Follow the Money

2009-06-14T12:36:00.001-04:00

Walter Sullivan has just told us that he is his own man and denied there was any manipulation in the CHCA election this year to insure an outcome that would clearly benefit the new-found arm of the business community and its founder and financier, Richard Snowden. If you buy any of that, please line up to purchase a bridge at wholesale from Bowman Properties.

Let's assume for the moment that all those purchased memberships just before the election and mass meetings of business types and their acolytes were not strategy sessions and pre-vote counting strategy a la Maxine and Dina, and that you won fair and square on the basis that the very limited number of participants in this last election wanted you at the leadership role because you represented independent integrity, legal expertise, and a willingness to run the organization using the By-Laws -- for a change.

Since I know your personal political history of having "found God in the Democratic Party" after being nurtured and maturing as a Republican and realizing that the needs of the people should triumph over the desires of the powerful (I think that is how you put it) let me ask you to transmit those beliefs directly to how you plan to run what remains of a once-legitimate community organization that actually did at one time deal with the needs of the majority over individual power players - - and there were always plenty of them in the Hill.

I see a conflict right off the bat with the Snowden Empire and your deep personal beliefs. This is the man with the deepest financial pockets who jettisoned the needs of the community years ago by keeping as many prime properties empty as a payback to a community who did not accede to his wishes and give carte blanche to his vision. What must have been more revolting to a "man of the people" like yourself than those huge racist bigoted billboards that Richard Snowden placed in the most prominent locations all over Chestnut Hill as a warning of things to come if he was not given his way - - can you even stand to recall the sight of them? This wasn't a page from Birmingham Alabama in the 1930s, this was darling Chestnut Hill just a couple of years ago!

And who is the entire community lining up to worship and follow as if it all never happened because his says his money and connections will make the Hill some combination of what it was and what it should be - - the very same individual who in his own mind must be laughing all the way to the bank he owns now having had the "Chestnut Hill Establishment" say UNCLE.

Your first mission as your own man is to restore confidence in this organization by picking up the pieces, and that means telling the truth to the larger community about what was done to destroy its image, and that goes to that well-worn path of following the money, who misused it and who covered up its misuse - - and why? For it is not whether the state DCED grant and community trust fund dollars went offshore versus being used to pave over reckless and self-serving management right here, but it is that a few clever manipulators took the Association you now preside over and ran it according to what they openly characterized as a "corporate model" but the corporation they must have chosen was Enron.

They moved the money, cooked the books, and now hide behind legal technicalities that even prevent their current auditors from telling the truth about how previous audits were incomplete, inaccurate and misleading. On top of that there is still an open investigation into financial irregularities by the State Attorney General. You must know that old adage about wheels grinding exceedingly small. It would be a shame if they ground to a halt on your watch and you were not prepared.

First order of business is to reinstate the Oversight Committee which was severed just as it was about to fulfill its two-year mandate. The first year it examined and reported on the CHCA. The second was to be the Fund, and that is where the money is, or I should say was. Sadly, the new trustees have done all they can to keep the Fund's history in the dark, even to the point of misleading the board for years now as to what kind of fund it was. The fund is the financial sandbox that has been misused and mismanaged going back many years, and claiming it could not have been stable and yielded reasonable returns while supporting the community with earnings rather than losing millions is nonsense - - but nonsense that much of the membership and most of the board has bought into.

Run the meetings with the community priorities ahead of personal agendas and according to the By-Laws, form committees with new and fresh leadership that don't do back channel work for insiders. Replace all the trustees as they serve at the pleasure of the board and can be removed at any time for any reason. Have the auditors do the right thing and report to the board quarterly while at the same time clean up the bogus and inaccurate reporting that the internal statements provide, and while you are at it, return to providing monthly internals for the Fund, which the current trustee president discontinued a year and a half ago so the board would have trouble monitoring its activities.

Lastly, do not let the CHCA become the zoning tool of the business community, for that is the primary reason they stacked the board in their favor at this election. There are massive plans in the offing and they will require multiple and far-reaching zoning changes and challenges to the Special District Controls that Chestnut Hill enjoys in the Zoning Code. Using you as a tool, along with the LUPZ and DRC is the master plan; make no mistake about it. Be that good committed Democrat you claim and don't let that narrow power base turn Chestnut Hill into Stepford on Fairmount Park.

So you have had power foisted upon you that you might have not imagined and are promising good things. We have seen those occasions before in our political history where unlikely individuals were parachuted into high positions and had the opportunity to do the right things and change course. These are often difficult decisions, and during the time the individuals are in power they have been sometimes vilified for what they do, sometimes worshiped, but only time tells who did the people's business legitimately. The big question for you Walter is - - will you be Harry Truman or Huey Long?

Remember that great film where the people triumph over arrogant power in the Community? Remember George Bailey? You and Kris can be Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, and Chestnut Hill can have "A Wonderful Life." I think we all know who represents Mr. Potter.

Jim Foster
Still close by

My Thanks ...

2009-06-11T15:18:00.004-04:00

My thanks to Walter Sullivan for identifying himself and addressing me directly. [Note: For back story, see the comments in In Camera Obscura] I don't know if it was the flattery or the ultimatum, but it worked. I will break my recent pledge and respond, one more time. But after I do, regardless of his response, I will not counter. As I have said before, he is not the one(s) I'm after.

Neither was Tolis. Stewart Graham, Dina Hitchcock, Jeanne Hemphill, and Richard Snowden are the ones who are the movers behind the various plans, from financial malfeasance to newspaper censorship that offend me. The rest are just helpers. So let's begin.

Walter says he never signed a comment as "anonymous". Why then, did he first sign his name to respond to the ultimatum I gave to "anonymous"? That thread never mentioned Walter, it was between me and "anonymous." Shouldn't "anonymous" be angry right about now? Hey "anonymous," why didn't you respond and tell Walter to stay out of our conversation? Right.

Next, the vote count, and the reason for Walter's election. Sorry, but I have never revealed my sources before, but since this story is all over the street, perhaps you can figure out how it got out. Just like the concept of you being better equipped than Tom Hemphill to "handle" Recko, Feldman and Foster. Sound familiar W.S.?

I see no criminality in you actions. Everyone should read more carefully, and not project. Criminals are those convicted of crimes. Chip Butler was. The board never asked him a single question about his actions during his term as trustee, during which he was under the investigation that led to his conviction.

I have written factual accounts on board misconduct for five years. My art includes some evocative imagery, as does the work of other writers, but I have always always included the issues. If someone else could have disputed my facts, they never did.

As for my comment on the Missus, well, gee Walt, you've got to know what I'm talking about.
But I can't hold Walter in the same contempt I have reserved for those mentioned above, for a lot of reasons. His foibles are surface mounted, and strangely lovable. He, unlike those others, is neither secretive, (well, not for long,anyway), mean, sinister, pathological, or profit minded.
But he has been willing to stand by while the others ran their games.

And here's where, and why, everything can change. And I will now speak directly to Walter.
You stood by while Maxine did things that you knew were wrong. That you and the rest of the board cut her loose is an admission.

You stood by while Dina embarrassed the community during the '08 election. You knew she did wrong, but you did nothing. She took a demotion. Another non-admission admission.
Your ethics, your standing in the community, and your voice could have been used to set things right, but you were silent.

Now you have the chance to set your past, and the CHCA's past, right. By listening to your heart, and to me. Because, despite your criticisms, I know what you think of me intellectually, ethically, and artistically. I can see it in your eyes Walter, and that finally, is why I don't hold you in contempt, why I don't think you're like the others.

And, in a political sense, see the difference in the National Political party you belong to and the neighborhood one you have worked with. And then think about the National political party you helped defeat last November. Where are the similarities? Where is the disconnect?

1. You must start by writing in the Local all that transpired in secret about the Positively Chestnut Hill Slate. The extent of Snowden's involvement must be revealed by someone who was there.

2. You must then follow through, stating that anyone who benefited financially from his electoral largesse must recuse themselves on any vote concerning zoning regarding his projects.

3. If anyone involved has revealed to you plans to change the Local, you must reveal them also.

4. You must then state that the Local will return to the freedom it enjoyed before unrelenting pressure from the board and specific board members turned it into a place where fear, rather than security, is the norm. You must guarantee Pete's job and his independence.

5. You must move for a forensic accounting of the Fund that has been fought by the board for so long

6. You must restore the oversight committee, with a non board membership. I will recuse myself from serving.

The Dina's and the Snowdens will not help re-elect you. But they will not be able to stop you during your term.

And here's where the inspirational stuff happens. Walter, the neighborhood will rally to you. All those people who have run from the board because of all the things they have done for so long would give you a REAL majority, not the "mandate" of the lowest vote turnout ever, so many purchased by the CHBA.

The numbers that would return because of your inspirational leadership will make the Dinas and the Snowdens and the CHBAs look like the small timers that they are, in both vote numbers and stature. You won't need their support, you'll have the people's. Some board members will support you also. You can use the Local as a bully pulpit for this reform.

If anyone knows what Dwight Eisenhower and the Republicans expected from Earl Warren, and what they got, you do. It changed America, Walter. It gave us freedom, it gave us equality, it eventually gave us Obama.

But Warren had to listen to his heart, not to those who gave him the job. He had to endure the "Impeach" billboards too.

Greatness never comes without sacrifice. Up 'til now you have been sacrificing the qualities that I think you possess; the qualities that can make you great.

Do any of those who helped you get elected talk to you this way? That's because they only care about themselves. Two parting thoughts, because after this, I'm done talking about this.
Of all human endeavors, the most admirable one, and the one most requiring courage, is redemption.

Courage exists in limitless amounts inside of us.

Norman Vincent Feldman

In Camera Obscura

2009-06-07T15:01:00.004-04:00

Uh-Oh. I almost fell into the trap, didn't I? For one post and a couple of comments, I took my eye off the ball. I got so sidetracked responding to the Walter thing that I forgot one of the reasons his election was engineered. He's not only there to do the bidding of others, putting up a front of stentorian smog, giving the appearance of gravitas whilst saying absolutely nothing, he's there to draw fire.

Just as his out-sized physicality and vocal timbre obscure his Escher-like communication skills, his very presence as president exists to obscure those who really run things.

But Walter is there for target practice, so easy to hit, so lampoon-able, much easier than Tolis. (I only made fun of the former presidents' sometimes inpenetrable accent in private. That was too politically incorrect for even me to do in print).

On reflection, CHCA president-selection does have a pattern. Someone with some sort of surface attribute of what the gullible intrepret as CLASS. Maxine and her Southern Charm and clerical background, Tolis and his Continental (albeit the island outpost of) flair, and now Walter and his Foghorn Leghorn sound and fury signifying......Huh?-What did he say?

At least Maxine spun her own webs. No Dina in the prompter box needed for her. And by the way, where the hell IS Maxine? I hope my first scalp is running her game on someone who deserves it. Ah, Maxine-Bernie Madoff crossed with Blanche DuBois.

So anyway, I have spent too much time parrying with, and writing about Walter, but as you can see, he's like potato chips, so hard to resist. So W.S., I will now focus on the real movers behind your election and the CHCA. So many fronts, so many back rooms.

A final note for you however. You're not a bad guy. You just got so desparate for some semblence of stature, somewhere, that you took the only job that was offered. History is littered with similar stories. They usually end up with someone saying that they only followed orders. But I guess you're used to that by now. Ask Lady MacBethstein about it, or is she too busy "kvelling"? (Ask her what that means).

Ed (God, I'm a stinker - but they deserve it) Feldman

The Record Shows...

2009-06-06T13:02:00.005-04:00

I don't usually do this. In fact I never do it . When someone criticizes my work without actually contradicting it, I just let it lay. If you don't have counter facts, or equal style, why should I ? I don't argue with people who just say I'm wrong, or mean, or ...something. And threats don't work either. But since so many of you still may not get it, or don't read ANY newspaper, and since, after putting off finishing that last Walter-like fog-bowl response of journalistic parvenu, I felt perhaps some parallel facts may be in order.

He accused me of judging others wholly on the basis of their having opinions differing from my own. I assume that he assumes that other local citizens who have run from the CHCA like Bambi's family from the forest fire has nothing to do with them seeing exactly what I saw. I also assume that he assumes that the oversight committee, made up of two attorneys and a former banker made up all of the report that was never contradicted by the board before, during, or after it abolished the oversight committee before its term expired.

But perhaps my accuser, who may or may not have a law degree, or be a member of any city democratic infrastructure, would listen to some others who, after a little investigation, have come to ally themselves with my "personal" agenda.

I called Trustee Chip Butler dishonest and a bad liar. In print. In the Local. I presented corroborated facts. Within months, he was arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced by the Eastern District Court. I had no prior knowledge of this. But I wasn't shocked.

I called John Capoferri some similar things in the Local. He has been arrested on multiple charges and will appear in the Dock on June 11.

The Pennsylvania State Attorney General, who, at last look, doesn't investigate organizations because their opinions "differ" from my own, or their own, or from anybody's own. They investigate on FACTS. Some of the facts I, and others have given them, are the same ones I have written about in the Local, and here.

So Walter, or whomever, or whomever is telling you to threaten me or Scott with legal action because of what I accuse you and your masters of, know that three different law enforcement agencies have found precisely what I have .

That the board is dirty. That the trustees can't be trusted. That those who the board has harbored and defended are, by the LEGAL definition of the word, CRIMINALS.

Want me to call the same law enforcement officials who investigated, arrested, charged, and sentenced the same people I accused first to the witness stand? I'd like that.

We can also discuss Dina and the ballots, Richard and the signs, and Walter and the vote count electing him to the CHCA presidency, that he pretended not to know at the meeting, but was actually told about before the meeting, before the vote was taken. I guess he confuses the big "D' in the the Democratic committee he belongs to with the little "d" in democracy that secret ballots are supposed to represent. We could talk about that too.

That the emperor has no clothes has long been known around the hill. What the emperor has been doing with a certain portion of his exposed anatomy is a matter of record.

Some People Care..

2009-06-01T14:36:00.007-04:00

I'll send something like this in to the Local and it won't be published. Pete told me that people just don't care. I told him he was half right. Those of you who have lives look at the CHCA's behavior as a combination of amusing, childish, and disgusting, but who cares? I dig.

The fact that, in an affluent neighborhood, the community government defrauds the community should engender little concern. That's always been my fallback position. I get to tell creeps what they are, tell you what they do. It diminishes their smugness, it makes them a little less happy. And I enjoy myself. But if I fail to thwart their plans, who gets hurt? More affluent whites. Who gives a shit? It's win-win for Eddie.

But some people DO care. They're the people on the board who will brook no breech of discipline. We saw a couple of instances of that at the May meeting, when the old Dina-Tolis -Stewie dynasty gave way to the Snowden-CHBA order. If you remember Caligula to Nero, without Claudius in between, you get the picture.

Tolis gave his valedictory, in which he gave special advice on learning and following the bylaws. Atheists everywhere should rejoice, for the fact that no lightning struck the outgoing president as he said those words prove that no god exists. Three feet away, Dina, who with Tolis' complicity has broken bylaws the way her pit bulls eat, sat mute. For the first meeting in ages, she did not have to whisper instructions into his ear before he acted. This little speech had already been prepared. Had only they been this organized before!

She may have been mulling her fate under the new order. For while there IS overlap in the Dina-Snowden Pathology, Dina's motivation has been simply sociopathic. Never smiling, always looking down, always starting her statements with the phrase, "what you have to understand," the earmarks of a life of non-engagement with others, except for the purposes of condescension and control. Richard on the other hand, while no stranger to vengeful foot stamping, does have a toe dipped in the pool of real-world commerce as motivation, if only for the continued obedience of Greg Welsh, Fran O'Donnell and the rest of the marginal Hill businesses who need every edge to move "product."

But what of Dina's future? She must know that there's a new sheriff in town. And he must know, for I have mentioned it, that she, along with Carol Cope and their then-numerous disciples, blocked Richards apology - for a while - and was even against his purchase of 8431. That was before his sweetheart deal with the convict-trustee Chip Butler got him his last CHCA scalp.
Richard has a beltful now. We shall see in the upcoming months, whether Dina, in a move to retain the power she has so single-mindedly amassed, will make a deal with Richard. It may already have happened.

But Dina may just be allying through surrogates. And certainly the culture of Hill businesses (or for that matter , any businesses) can supply them. For while the pathology of both Richard and Dina have a strict "cross me and I'll cut you" dynamic, business folk can't afford that luxury. Even the most hated of adversaries are potential customers.

This explains the always -for-sale Lou Aiello smiling at me, the slumlord thousandaire Sanjiv Jain calling me on the phone to make peace, and even Hate-Criminal Rob Remus claiming no ill will towards me after the May meeting. He's probably a new disciple of Sanjiv's "make people like you-it's easier to cheat them" Landmark business success course.

So Dina had Mike Hickey as her partner in the nomination manipulation scam we saw. Mike, so big and brawny, yet I got him to wimp out in the Town hall lobby two years ago, and now he attacks Ron Recko in a meeting from which Ron is absent. Pussy stuff, Mike.

But maybe you missed some hits carried out recently, perhaps a last show of force by Dina before she finally has to share power with the boy-kink.

In a arcane bit of interlocking representative-titty-twisting, Meredith Sonderscov, one of those hard working volunteers that the board always lauds, got kicked to the curb and replaced by a more loyal-to-Dina volunteer. Meredith had agreed that Dina had broken the election rules, and had the bad judgement to say so. That was enough for her position as Senior Center to be -1. eliminated, and -2. reinstated with a different, now hyphenated name, with someone else in the position.

That the center is now located in the building that Snowden got Butler to sell him, against the wishes of Dina, is a concept that would have baffled Richard Feynman. It may or may not be unraveled in the fullness of time.

So Dina succeeds where the White Citizens Council, (one of Meredith's past sparring partners failed.

And now, a lesson in loyalty vs " reasonableness". Pat Moran is a reasonable guy. He tried to bridge the gap between those who have used the CHCA as their pigsty and those who told you all about it. He was so reasonable that he never even spoke to me. He defended the board often, but said it could improve. I do not think his partners' position as community manager had anything to do with any of his actions.

But Pat went too far too often for Dina. He said he was "appalled" at the way the ballot destroying election played, and at this election he was cut like a mackerel. No more board for reasonable Pat. He sat, face down, at the meeting. I couldn't get him to look at me. Pat-It's OK- you can talk to me now- They screwed you for being reasonable and having morals.
I called Phil and left a message. In it I mentioned that sitting on their hands while Jimmy Pack got Hate-Crimed didn't help them. It's all or nothing with Her. I wonder what Rob Remus thinks about Pat and Phil?

So, two disloyal volunteers down and, well no more to go, unless someone new, with the knowledge that even reasonable objections are treated like so many turds in a cut-glass punchbowl at the Holiday House Tour, will take put their board membership in jeopardy by.......objecting to something!

Certainly that's why Tom Hemphill didn't have a chance at President over Walter Sullivan. Even if the vote outcome hadn't been known before the meeting and been told to Walter, who in a nice bit of asymetry, neglected to give the count after the results were announced, as per the rules......rules? election rules?

Tom dislikes my tactics, and me personally,I think. But he got screwed here too. He has, like Pat Moran, reasonably defended the board, most recently at the inaugural Chestnut hill Residents' Association meeting, but he made two critical mistakes. He said, at the CHRA meeting that Pete would be fired, "over my dead body", while Mark Kientz was in the room. He may as well have hired a sky writer. And during his pre-vote speech, said that he would restore trust in the board if elected president. The cardinal rule of the CHCA has always been denial and admitting fault gets you, well, Tom lost by ten votes. See, I got the vote count even though they didn't announce it!

But for comedy writers like me, even when stuck in black comedies in white neighborhoods, all is not lost. For in Walter Sullivan we have found our touchstone of buffoonery, a Punchinello of Pomposity, the big wind from Winnetka, a man so rife with comedic possibilities that the anticipation of his stewardship of meetings makes me think that I could make money selling tickets.

I will, at every opportunity, video tape these public meetings, as is my legal right, and You-Tube the shit out of them. Walters' Foghorn Leghorn obliviousness to his obfuscatorian bombast will make him a star on the order of Keyboard Cat. Christ Almighty, I CAN'T WAIT!

Walters election is due, of course, to his past obedience to Dina et al. But rather then his willingness to follow orders in order to acheive the cubic zirconia of a career of always being outrun by speeding ambulances, I think his natural ability to make any audience's eyes glaze over and think about other times, other places, anything but the drone of his basso confoundo, got him this job.

Since no one ever knows what the hell Walter is saying, since he never makes his point , but sounds like he might, it's the perfect smokescreen for a board who does all it's work outside the board room, in secret. All this entertainment, and I haven't even gotten to Richard yet. Or Stewie and the plight of a Republican in Philly, or Doug Doman' s Institute of False Hope, or Marie Lachat's $26,000.000 blackmail, or Jane Pietrowski's racket.

I LOVE MY JOB!!!

Discuss Among Yourselves

2009-05-30T20:45:00.006-04:00

Ed Note: There are two cross-comments today that deserve posting to further the discussion on the Chestnut Hill Community Fund, the Chestnut Hill Community Association and the inter-related cluster-f that it encompasses. As an aside, Keintz has not been replaced as treasurer despite his obvious incompetence (he is a walking joke) and Sullivan (BDD-prez), Piotrowski (VP Operations) and Aiello (VP Physical Division) take us back to the Maxinista years. Incompetency has its reward. But at least the board has fall guys now. As an aside, word has it Pat Moran has resigned. Nancy Hutter moves up to the board. How long will Phil retain the Community Manager slot? And with Richard Snowden on the CHCA board, the tragi-comedy is complete.

Also, a small collection of commenters from familiar IPs keep sending "give it up" and "move forward" messages. It's much like the Coulter-Malkin-Limbaugh refrain we hear about the Cheney-Bush years. Guys, make your own blog to tell people what you think. Because you don't sign your posts or request "no name," you don't get posted. You may as well know that as moderator, I get a lede that gives me the first seven words. I delete it as to not waste time. I never see the rest of your BS. Keep your auto-erotism to yourselves. Please, make your own site.

Scott Alloway, Waylaid Pilgrim

Posted by Jeremiade

Jim: Insider manipulation? The change in the Fund (CHCF) that happened in the 1990's was a decision by the trustees to move from bonds (bond funds) to stocks (funds also). It was an attempt to earn more on the substantial holdings of the Fund. It can not be characterized as manipulation. The trustees are chosen by the CHCA board to make those decisions. Perhaps the trustees decisions were poor (known only in hindsight) but I doubt that the trustees gained personally. Who hasn't lost money in this market? You owe an appology to the trustees for your comparison to Madoff.

As far as financial information withheld from board members, that is the responsibility of the Treasurer. CHCA boards elect the treasurer and he has access to the brokerage statements which are mailed to both the CHCF and the CHCA at Town Hall. It was wrong for any treasurer to withhold such information from board members and, to this day, I have no idea why that was done. You had an incompetent treasurer who was elected by the board, the same board that elected the Fund trustees. As far as the Fund loans to the CHCA, the fake signature was that of the CHCA president who was also elected by the board. (I do not believe this act will be determined to be anything but sloppiness and laziness, not wrongdoing.) The Fund should not have made any loans not directed to do so by the CHCA board. Problematic cash flow must be reported to the board by the treasurer, who should present a resolution to borrow money from the Fund.

I can agree with you that the CHCA boards have acted improperly (not just in financial matters) but your spin of these financial matters is just plain wrong. If Trustee McGuckin and Treasurer Keintz are not doing their jobs properly, then replace them.

The purchase of 8431 Gtn Ave was never intended to make money. CHCA boards never carried through on their original plans for the building and ultimately sold it. Sure the whole thing was a mistake, but again, there was no wrongdoing. And the mistake was one made by the CHCA board in not having a realistic plan.

I think you meant well but you are too off base factually to be effective. Sadly, you are right that there is little left to respect in the CHCA. That's why the CHRA is trying to take root. But there's always hope and another election next year.

Jeremiade

Note: May 31. The Foster repsonse has been corrected for typos.

Response by Jim Foster:

The title of the post I recently made was “Deflection and Self-Protection,” [since corrected - ed.] and not Self-Reflection and it was intended to characterize the words of Messrs. McGuckin and Nottingham that were published in the Local, and many of the actions and manipulations of by-laws and process over the years.

To respond to Jeremaide who does properly outline what the well structured CHCA and CHCF guiding documents require of its officers and directors, I will state the following:

There are no existing minutes from CHCF trustees or CHCA board meetings where the decision to move to high yield investments took place. In fact there are no existing minutes in the Fund minute book going back 23 years as per notation in the current minutes provided by this group of trustees. That declaration is in the handwriting and signed by the Secretary of the current trustees. No minutes for 23 years! Believe me, we searched for the minutes of the trustees for the entire period from the late 1990s up through 2006-07 and found none (also many CHCA board meeting minutes were missing from that same period)

My personal 3 hour interview with Trustee President Butler in 2007 included questions about those minutes and trustee meetings where the loans were authorized using Fund assets as security and his reply was “I have no recollection when we ever met, and those loans should not have been made.” He further commented that while he knew they were moving money from the trust without proper oversight, that he should never have let it happen. “They were robbing the piggy bank and I did not stop it” was the quote I believe. However, he made specific reference to the final use of the Fund-owned building at 8431 to secure a $50,000 loan to an out-of-area bank claiming he had no knowledge it was made. Not only does that loan have a signature of the CHCA President claiming she was the CHCF President, but an accompanying notarized signature on a separate document is where that person swears she holds that title with the Fund. Clearly there is no accident here, and it was done by a knowing individual who was not naïve or uninformed as to process, corporate structure, and responsibility.

It must be noted here that the transfers of funds from CHCF accounts to CHCA were frequent and were done through the simple signatures of bookkeepers and clerks on checks. Not one officer ever signed those transfers and check writing authority in any amount on any account was held by three employees who could sign individually, and did so. It was not until after we implemented the first group of recommendations of the Oversight Committee in 2007 that two signatures were required and officers were to be the signers.

Bottom line, a part-time bookkeeper and a part-time administrator had full check signing authority in any amount at any time on any account. Not only was that a fact, but the tax returns (1120s) and non-profit annual returns (990s) were never signed by an officer during that period despite the fact that the federal forms used state “Signature of Officer” directly under that line.

Tell me how a 45 year old organization and 25 year old trust fund in a community where most folks are college graduates and above, that runs a million dollar newspaper and a two million dollar trust fund, and makes all those mistakes accidentally. Compounding the problem is that denial that these things ever happened is alive and well to this day. Some have even charged that members of the reform board of 2006 forged those documents. No proper audit was ever done for 2005 and 2006 for either entity and it was during those fiscal years that most of the money was moved from trust to CHCA without controls. It is not just the treasurer alone who failed here. As the Oversight Committee stated in its summary report, we felt that the trustees were the final security, protector of assets and firewall for the money in the tax exempt trust, and had they followed only the minimum standards by holding meetings and keeping records, none of the rest could have happened. Even if the board was easily manipulated (and they obviously were) if they could not get to the trust fund money, the whole process would have ground to a halt in 2005 at the latest.

As to the purchase of 8431 and the claim that it was never intended to make money for the Fund, I was not there, nor did we find minutes that support that claim. What we did learn was that it was supposed to “break even” after expenses and debt service through rentals, but then provide space for community events in one portion. What financial records do show is that it lost money virtually every month it was owned and was rarely fully occupied for years. Now, if the Fund chooses to be in the real estate business, it is to monitor its assets, and clearly it did not. I would call that another trustee failure, but again no minutes or records they ever took it up exist, and they owned the building. Now, the board did discuss this from time to time, but no remedial action that moved the building into at least break-even was ever accomplished, and furthermore the use of it for public purposes never happened either. For that reason when they sold the building the IRS penalized the fund $70,000 or so as it violated the rules for a non-profit owning real estate. When will these administrative accidents stop happening?

Sure a better treasurer would have helped, but so would a board that was interested in performance more than resume enhancement, so would trustees whose names we never really knew for sure, as there were no documents or complete board minutes which stated for certain who was a trustee and for what period. Mr. Butler claimed he knew at the 11th hour when he sold the building to Bowman properties and dragged two individuals to a meeting who “supported” his actions, but it was never verified that they were serving according to the Trust Indenture, and when questioned about that Mr. Butler stated that an emergency provision in that document let him make that decision on his own.

All the reform group ever requested was a true outside audit by a professional independent auditor who was familiar with non-profits and the laws that accompanied them when there were affiliated for profit relationships. After that was done, we suggested filing amended tax and non-profit returns, tightening up the inside financial rules, and moving ahead on sold footing - - something that definitely did not exist in my view for at least the previous 7-8 years. No one wanted anyone prosecuted, nor did we want to continue the debate, just make the corrections and admit they needed to be made. It was that “admitting” part that sent shock waves through Chestnut Hill.

Instead a massive push back against any action but the minor office procedures began and in the process it has destroyed the CHCA and CHCF credibility to the point that it is now the tool of another group who want to use if for their own narrow agendas, not the “quality of life of Chestnut Hill and the surrounding areas” as the documents so well drawn years ago state.

The problem in nutshell is that some very educated folks think those documents are a joke and the fund, with its tax free shelter, is their financial sandbox

Just a few accidental administrative errors - - not a chance.

Jim Foster.

Deflection and Self-Protection

2009-05-29T20:58:00.005-04:00

[Ed Note: Header Corrected from Self-Reflection]

There is little left to respect in the carcass of the self-destructed CHCA that the community would just as soon forget as participate with. Were it not for the Local, the newspaper it owns and mismanages, many would find no reason for its existence after its leadership spent the last two years trying to cover the tracks of past executive manipulations and fiscal mismanagement - - and failed.

The final shoe is dropping now as there is one long-unanswered question that clever manipulators have kept in the dark for quite some time - - what about the Trust Fund? That would be the formerly multi-million dollar fund that has been raided, misused, and run largely under the radar for years, but only now are we getting some essential information that the reform board of several years ago tried to convey, but were prevented by a combination of board and public pressure to never speak ill of what goes on in the Hill.

Designed to provide for the community's general welfare, this fund has been a source of insider manipulation since the 1990s and lost hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, needlessly in poor investments, insider deals, and illegal and improper use of principal without trustee approval. The only noticeable gain in recent years was on a piece of real estate that itself lost money each year it was owned, but general market appreciation produced a gain at forced sale two years ago. Not to worry, tax penalties and trustee recent action, or should I say inaction, lost much of those gains in a year and half.

For the few who left who care about how millions are spent or wasted, this Fund is run by trustees who are appointed by the CHCA and serve at the pleasure of the board - - it is not the other way around as current trustee chair Jean Hemphill and others would want you to believe. Covering the tracks of this trust fund (and it is not an endowment) has been the major effort of the recent past CHCA and CHCF leadership. We all should be familiar with the old adage regarding institutional wrongdoing - - follow the money.

Last week's Local finds former board member and Merrill Lynch account manager Mark Nottingham coming out of the dark to answer reform board president Ron Recko's questions that were actually directed at Trustee McGuckin and Treasurer Keintz regarding fund investment performance and CHCA financial issues. McGuckin's accusatory demeaning comments previously made the pages of the local and the CHCA annual meeting in an immature attempt to blame all past CHCA/CHCF failures on a few individuals who won't actively participate in the "three monkey program."

Since the trustees serve at the pleasure of the board, must report to it, and are charged with maintaining value within the fund and overseeing prudent disbursement, one might think that if the board makes recommendations as to how secure the principal is maintained, they just might take that into consideration. The exact opposite has happened as board recommendations on several occasions since early 2007 to move the cash investments from equities to insured bank deposits were rejected out of hand, and the fund has lost nearly 30% of its value. There was no need for high-performance investments in this community fund; stability and earnings were sufficient, and past performance in money-losing accounts and other investments prompted the informed board members to make just those recommendations; but to no avail.

Mr. Nottigham's rambling explanation in hyper-technical terms that mean very little to the average person do not come close to answering Mr. Recko's questions, and who cares what other high risk funds lost - - we did not want our assets in high risk funds - - and we said so!

To the facts. I, as a board member, asked for a copy of the Merrill Lynch statement where all these investments reside and was refused in writing by the Fund President just a short time ago. Let me remind the readers this is the same 50lc3 "public charity" that refused board members financial information that led to mass resignations from the board, as well as the hiring of an attorney to restore some transparency.

Now we are told those records are public as if they had been all along, and that is just not so. Minutes of trustee meetings are never published in the Local and were not even forwarded to the board. Only Ron Recko's request a while back brought them out of the dark cave where all financial records, accurate and inaccurate reside. A read of those minutes themselves is eye-opening and publishing might be in order.

Now Mr. Nottigham did respond two years ago when the legally constituted CHCA Oversight Committee requested information on the operations of his managed account within the trust fund; particularly the fact it provided collateral for loans illegally generated outside of required trustee approval and misused by the affiliated CHCA; again under the radar. The $180,000 draw downs included a loan with fraudulent documents of $50,000, since repaid at a settlement table, but never properly treated in the fund accounting.

Mr. Nottingham, then Financial Advisor to the CHCA Board, and at the same time Merrill Lynch Account Manager for the Fund, went to great pains to inform us that he protested strongly to then trustee president Butler that these loans against trust fund assets were being improperly used, and provided documentation to that effect which still exists. Using his own words, he was told that he should learn to "go along and get along if he wants to keep the account". He told us he was rebuked and then jettisoned as board advisor. However, all non-real estate holdings of the fund were still in his control.

One wonders then, why the same Mr. Nottingham allowed Mr. Butler to take the entire proceeds from the sale of the fund-owned property at 8431 Germantown Avenue and wash it through the Merrill Lynch account rather than deposit it into the fund general account (as he should have) and then hold a meeting of trustees (as required in the Trust Indenture) and get approval of how those funds should be dispersed or invested.

That never happened and Mr. Nottingham has had the benefit of the entire balance of proceeds from that $1.2 million dollar sale ever since. Only a meeting and discussion among trustees could have properly and legally "forgiven" that debt to the CHCA, and determined how it might be invested. That was never done, and the primary effort of the management of the CHCA and the Fund since that time has been to keep these facts and other relative financial data from the board and the public. Attempts to get a qualified auditor to review the books for this period were met with the same dug-in practices. The current auditors are hiding behind the "management letter" which states that as long as management tells them the previous records are accurate, that is all they need.

I think that is what Exxon and Madoff did as well.

Jim Foster
Board Member until Thursday

Karma's a Bitch

2009-05-19T14:48:00.005-04:00

If Walter Sullivan can be Chestnut Hill Community Association prez-to-be and Geraldine Hitchcock the treasurer wanna-be, what does that make Rob Remus, Operations-honcho would-be, guardian of civility on Germantown Avenue and the subject of a visit by Philadelphia's finest to the Local office a few months back?

Oh, wait. Rob may be busy.

From the Philadelphia city civil docket...

Case Description

Case ID: 090531568
Case Caption: CITY OF PHILA vs REMUS ROBERT C
Filing Date: Friday , May 15th, 2009
Court: JD - JUDGMENTS
Location: CH - City Hall
Jury: N - NON JURY
Case Type: 7G - CLAIM FOR GAS SERVICE
Status: JDPGW - GAS SERVICE CLAIM JDGMNT FILED

Related Cases

No related cases were found.

Case Event Schedule

No case events were found.

Case Parties

Seq # Assoc Expn Date Type ID Name
1 PLAINTIFF I1000 CITY OF PHILADELPHIA
Address: C/O LAW DEPARTMENT
1515 ARCH ST, 15TH FLOOR
PHILADELPHIA PA 19102-1595 Aliases: none

2 DEFENDANT @6299107 REMUS, ROBERT C
Address: ARDLEIGH STREET 7801
PHILA PA 19118 Aliases: none

Docket Entries

Filing Date/Time Docket Type Filing Party Disposition Amount Approval/
Entry Date
15-MAY-2009
09:00 PM ACTIV - ACTIVE CASE 15-MAY-2009
09:00 PM
Docket Entry: none.

15-MAY-2009
09:00 PM JDPGW - GAS SERVICE CLAIM JDGMNT FILED CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, $1,134.74 15-MAY-2009
09:00 PM
Docket Entry: none.

15-MAY-2009
09:00 PM CTYCH - CITY CHARGE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, 15-MAY-2009
09:00 PM
Docket Entry: none.

--

Case Description

Case ID: 090304112
Case Caption: GMAC MORTGAGE,LLC VS REMUS ETAL
Filing Date: Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
Court: MR - MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE
Location: CH - City Hall
Jury: N - NON JURY
Case Type: 3D - RESIDENTIAL OWNER OCCUPIED-MR
Status: ACTIV - ACTIVE CASE

Related Cases

No related cases were found.

Case Event Schedule

Event Date/Time Room Location Judge
CONCILIATION CONFERENCE 11-JUN-2009
01:00 PM City Hall Courtroom 676, City Hall unassigned

Case Parties

Seq # Assoc Expn Date Type ID Name
1 ATTORNEY FOR PLAINTIFF A62695 HALLINAN, FRANCIS S
Address: 1617 JFK Blvd
ONE PENN CENTER
STE 1400
Philadelphia PA 19103
(215)563-7000 Aliases: none

2 1 PLAINTIFF @6257106 GMAC MORTGAGE,LLC
Address: 1100 VIRGINIA DRIVE
P.O. BOX 8300
FORT WASHINGTON PA 19034 Aliases: none

3 DEFENDANT @6257107 REMUS, ROBERT C.
Address: 7801 ARDLEIGH STREET
PHILADELPHIA PA 19118-4405 Aliases: none

4 DEFENDANT @6257108 REMUS, EILEEN M.
Address: 7801 ARDLEIGH STREET
PHILADELPHIA PA 19118-4405 Aliases: none

5 ATTORNEY FOR PLAINTIFF A62205 SCHMIEG, DANIEL G
Address: 1617 JFK BLVD
SUITE 1400
PHILADELPHIA PA 19103 Aliases: none

Docket Entries

Filing Date/Time Docket Type Filing Party Disposition Amount Approval/
Entry Date
25-MAR-2009
01:44 PM ACTIV - ACTIVE CASE 25-MAR-2009
03:22 PM
Docket Entry: E-Filing Number: 0903039745

25-MAR-2009
01:44 PM CIVIL - COMMENCEMENT OF CIVIL ACTION HALLINAN, FRANCIS S 25-MAR-2009
03:22 PM
Docket Entry: none.

25-MAR-2009
01:44 PM CMPLT - COMPLAINT FILED NOTICE GIVEN HALLINAN, FRANCIS S $421,090.74 25-MAR-2009
03:22 PM
Docket Entry: COMPLAINT WITH NOTICE TO DEFEND WITHIN TWENTY (20) DAYS AFTER SERVICE IN ACCORDANCE WITH RULE 1018.1 FILED.

25-MAR-2009
01:44 PM SSCG2 - SHERIFF'S SURCHARGE 2 DEFTS HALLINAN, FRANCIS S 25-MAR-2009
03:22 PM
Docket Entry: none.

25-MAR-2009
01:44 PM CMOIS - CASE MANAGEMENT ORDER ISSUED HALLINAN, FRANCIS S 25-MAR-2009
03:22 PM
Docket Entry: none.

25-MAR-2009
03:22 PM CONCL - CONCILIATION CONF SCHEDULED 25-MAR-2009
03:22 PM
Docket Entry: SCHEDULED FOR CONCILIATION CONFERENCE ON JUNE 11, 2009, AT 01:00 PM AT THE CITY HALL, ROOM 676.

06-APR-2009
10:41 AM AFDVT - AFFIDAVIT OF SERVICE FILED SCHMIEG, DANIEL G 06-APR-2009
02:39 PM
Docket Entry: AFFIDAVIT OF SERVICE OF PLAINTIFF'S COMPLAINT UPON ROBERT C. REMUS BY PERSONAL SERVICE ON 03/31/2009 FILED. (FILED ON BEHALF OF GMAC MORTGAGE,LLC)

06-APR-2009
10:49 AM AFDVT - AFFIDAVIT OF SERVICE FILED SCHMIEG, DANIEL G 06-APR-2009
02:44 PM
Docket Entry: AFFIDAVIT OF SERVICE OF PLAINTIFF'S COMPLAINT UPON EILEEN M. REMUS BY PERSONAL SERVICE ON 03/31/2009 FILED. (FILED ON BEHALF OF GMAC MORTGAGE,LLC)

Naked Nuns at the Garden Fest This Sunday

2009-05-15T16:05:00.004-04:00

Garden Fest this Sunday? That sounds so familiar. Déjà vu? Nope. Rain date.

Rev. Chris Marsceill and the Naked Nuns of Soul will be performing two shows (recurring déjà vu theme) at the Chestnut Hill Garden Festival, this Sunday, May 17.

11:30 am
Drake’s Gourmet Foods
8419 Germantown Ave
215-247-5911
In the garden (how appropriate!)

Along with his usual delicious stuff, Chef Carl is going to be serving free beer -- which would be enough to get me there even if I wasn’t playing.

4:00 pm
Tavern on the Hill
8636 Germantown Ave
215-247-9948

If you missed their show at the Tavern on the 8th… well, you missed a hell of a night! Now’s your chance to make up for it. Hat tip to the lads who left and came back with their friends!

** If it rains, the 11:30 show will be canceled. But the last time I checked, which was five minutes ago, the chance of showers at 11 am was 10%, so keep on thinkin’ sunny thoughts.

Update: SAVE THE DATE: Wednesday, July 15th – Pastorius Park Concert Series – Katie Drake will be joining other Chestnut Hill local musicians (no affiliation with the newspaper of the same name) including Dave Cope, Jason Fifield, Tony Garro, Roger Learnard, and Chris Marsceill, for what she expects to be a super-fun supergroup kinda night. She's been told the show may be videotaped, so make her look good by coming out and bringing all your friends.

Speaking From Strictly An Advertising Standpoint

2009-05-12T14:08:00.003-04:00

On Friday, May 1st the CHBA decided to cancel the Garden Fest, an event that brings 15,000 people to Chestnut Hill (that's CHBA's numbers, not mine), due to weather. Good call, the weather on Sunday, May 3rd was a horrible rainy day.

Mt. Airy Day lucked out: the weather on May 2nd and the event was tons o' fun.

I noticed that by 5pm on 5/2 the banners across Germantown Avenue advertising Mt. Airy Day were already removed, however the banners for Garden Fest on Germantown Ave were still advertising the wrong date (5/3, which was canceled the previous afternoon).

There really should have been some kind of alteration to the banners (it must be easy, they are the same each year with the date changed) so that all the foot traffic and drivers on that beautiful, sunny Saturday knew that the Festival date had changed.

But then again, I'm just a lowly piano player who knows more about tri-tone subs than the politics of this kind of neighborhood.

The Chestnut Hill Residents Association (formerly CHNU) Goes Public

2009-05-08T13:47:00.007-04:00

The Chestnut Hill Residents Association held its inaugural meeting at the Chestnut Hill Library on May 6. It was great! Originally called Chestnut Hill Neighbors United, the 50 or so folks who assembled voted to change the name after initially laughing at well known Hiller George Spaeth's objection to the name as sounding "radical.'

George is funny in so many ways, the reason for so many doctor-as-God jokes, you hear one on George any time you have lunch with a Hiller over Sixty.

But the assembled, being a tolerant lot, decided to change the name anyway. Tolerant? A Hill organization being Tolerant? This is Already Radical.

The Proposed Organizational guidelines will be published on the CHRA website soon. Only a page and a half. Proposed, because members can propose changes or additions. Sounds weirdly democratic-easy even. Unlike the piloting of the Titanic-like CHCA, PEOPLE will actually be involved in the decision making process of the CHRA.

Wednesday Nights' meeting had a vibrancy rarely seen or heard in 19118, possibly due to the fact that NO gavels were present, and all the folks, with two notible exceptions, displayed a conspicuous LACK of that pervasive Hill quality, Entitlement. And everyone got to talk.
The two unsurprising exceptions were CHCA board members, Tom Hemphill, member of the Richard Snowden Financed Positively Chestnut Hill Slate, and Mark Keintz, the Uniquely Financially Unqualified CHCA treasurer.

These two seemed to be dropped into this meeting from a completely different movie, one where the CHCA mattered. They spent their time defending the CHCA, saying it had done GOOD THINGS.

Mark even continued his attack on the Local by saying it lost money last year. That Mark is a computer progammer by trade is a perfect analogy for his actions, for his personal programming is evident each time he speaks. His bytes are all aligned to continually grease the rails for a complete takeover of the Local's editorial department by detailing its financial woes. Doesn't make sense, does it? Their justifications never do. Remember Dina's "feminine intuition"? The reason she gave for ballot destruction? Minerva made her do it.

But in the middle of a meeting concentrating on organizing a viable organization for the betterment of Chestnut Hill run by people who LIVE THERE (more radicalism), Mark was still attacking the Local.

Mark, (for I know you read this), nobody cared what you had to say. You may as well been blaming the Spanish for blowing up the Battleship Maine. Because the people in that room, and the thousands who will join the free-to-join CHRA have, in the parlance used so often by the CHCA board when their hands were caught in cookie jar after cookie jar and were then unwilling to confront their own crimes, MOVED ON.

Tom and Mark may have sensed that by their presence. They both certainly have a record for hitching their political wagons to any group that might help them get into a position of what passes for power in 19118.

Yet for someone as Realpolitik as Tom, who pledged at the meeting that Pete would be fired over "My dead body," he was certainly willing to have his candidacy financed by Lord Snowden, who is known by my dead Cat as one who sees Pete's departure as job one for the "Positively Richard" slate. My guess is that Tom's role model in his political life is Arlen Spector. He's so busy checking which way the wind is blowing he never looks into anyone's eyes.

He did however, during his defense of the CHCA at a meeting where everyone knew better, rarely take his eyes off me. I guess I'm just that magnetic.

Tom, it's too late for you and me, just like it's too late for anyone to defend that group of power freaks. Besides, you've got enough problems within the board. I welcome tales of the Dina psycho faction and how they interact with the CHBA-Snowden Zoning Bulldozer.

In the only instance on record of me agreeing with the Lady-who-Munch was in the Matter of Snowden. Dina actually agreed with me on the Boy Kinks degree of despicability, and she blocked a vote on his apology once, with Carol (Lithium-isn't strong-enough) Cope's help.
It was our last civil conversation. But Greg Welsh used to say how insane Richard was, often, at his Bar, and that sure changed.

But Tom and Mark have not. After they had their say at the CHRA meeting, the new members simply moved on, with plans to organize a free-to-join, open Association with NO telephone Book of By-Laws to be selectively followed, No standing-interlocking-excuse-for-a-power-base-committees, No officers, No Suburban Busy Bodies trying to run a neighborhood they don't live in, No Corporate-Model-Question-Stifling-Meetings, and No Gavels. I can't even join, but I got to have my say, and so did Everyone Else.

The CHRA website will be set up soon to take residents' information and issue memberships.
There will be tables and sign up sheets at the Jenks School Flea Market on Saturday May 16.
There will be multiple sign up tables at the Garden Festival on the Avenue, Sunday, May 17.
Members can comment, propose action, and even vote by secured email or at the free and open monthly meetings

The residents of Chestnut Village, whose existence has been so conspicuously ignored by the CHCA for so long have shown great interest in joining the CHRA.

When I tell them what has been said about them by CHCA board members they will be even more interested.

9600 people live in 19118. The CHCA has 2046 members. No one will tell me how many live outside of Chestnut Hill.

If everyone fed up with the CHCA, the CHBA (which is now the same thing), Snowden, Sanjiv, Dina, and Some people being more equal than other people, would join the CHRA, its numbers would be so large that the City would not listen to CHCA on Zoning and on many other matters.
Just join and win. Democracy is always worth a try.

I hereby apologize to everyone at the CHRA meeting for not bringing cookies and punch. This will Never Happen Again. You were a nice group of people and you deseved refreshments. I'll do better next time.

Ed (I can't join but I like cookies and punch) Feldman

PS: My next Posts will be thematic: Good byes to all outgoing CHCA board members with previously unpublished factual tales of malfeasance and pathos. Ned, Stewie, Marie, Carol, all the usual suspects — I got a million of 'em.

Letter? What letter?

2009-05-04T18:38:00.001-04:00

Hey Tolis. Aren't you going to share the letter you received last week on behalf of the board with the community? They're the ones paying the CHCA freight.

CHNU to Meet May 6

2009-05-04T18:33:00.003-04:00

Chestnut Hill Neighbors United will hold its first meeting this Wednesday, May 6, at 7 PM in the Chestnut Hill branch of the Free Library.

A start-up blog has been posted (done as a sign of support by me) at Chestnut Hill Neighbors United. More information will be available at the site.

It Continues

2009-04-27T08:08:00.004-04:00

Yes, there will be a new Chestnut Hill Community Association board of directors installed soon. But to expect great changes in attitude toward the independence of the Local may be too much to ask. CHCF member McGuckin rants behind a digital screen about "two-bit peddlers" Recko, Foster and Feldman in a Rushbo imitation. Rob "n of 4" Remus continues pushing his dim assessment of what a newspaper needs to offer to be a success and the Local personnel policy simmers in the background, waiting to boil over.

Maybe we need a print version of this digital rag...

CHCA Board Election Results: Stamp It Paid

2009-04-26T17:47:00.006-04:00

As requested in a comment post, we list the winners in this year's balloting for the Chestnut Hill Community Association Board of Directors. We understand that about 380 people voted, but it isn't our job to post the official tally. We do understand there were 36 "invalid" ballots. Was it only last year the ballots were hidden and destroyed on official orders? My, how time flies when you're unemployed.

The winners, ballot order:
Lou Aiello, Stephanie Chomentowski, Michael Chomentowski, Vanessa Mullen, Mary Anna Ross Cowper, Lisa Webb Howe, Wendy S. Kern,Fran O'Donnell, Mary Regina Wedgwood, Chris A. Padova, Jay Valinas, Tom Hemphill, John Ingersoll, Brien P. Tilley, Thomas Cullen, Arthur Howe, Walter J. Sullivan and David Mansfield.

Next post, WATB of the Week. Hint, last name begins with M and he hides behind a list-serve curtain. And Petee, give it up.

And the Winners Are ...

2009-04-25T11:26:00.006-04:00

The Chestnut Hill Community Association election results: It's easier to go to the "Coach wants to see you. Bring your playbook" call. They were Nancy Hutter and Jim Foster. John Ingersoll of the Chestnut Hill Cheese Shop was the top vote getter.

Now, let's go off on a tangent - Anonymous raises issues of the text of the constitution versus case law; this in response to a comment in "Rules handed down .... " In true Cheney-speak, it is said "perhaps you should extend your reading beyond the text of the US Constitution itself, to the caselaw that interprets same, as well as other law that is applicable to the issue at hand." Shakespeare had something to say about lawyers in Henry VI (Part 2). But I digress. The train wreck that the Chestnut Hill Community Asociation board of directors has become continues to be that awful thing no one wants to see, but is the kind of crash everyone slows to look at when they drive by.

Back to the kangaroo court justices and ballot takers of this past year. My belief is the current president of CHCA is more comfortable with the Greek-style military dictatorships of the sixties than a town hall democracy. And the operations chief would have fit in quite comfortably as a hit woman in Cheney's office of the VPUS. What this next board will bring (another attempt to ramrod a faulty and anti-labor personnel policy down employees throats, for one) will soon be unveiled.

Ed Feldman promises to post excerpts from the personnel policy proposal. These may prove enlightening.

Rules handed down from on high

2009-04-23T17:55:00.005-04:00

A new personnel policy for employees of the Chestnut Hill Local (and maybe by extension, the CHCA) will be presented at the Chestnut Hill Community Association board of directors meeting tonight.

You haven't seen them?

Neither have some board members. Or employees. Or members of the community. It appears director of operations Dina Hitchcock, as is her habit, couldn't find copies for some board members or claimed they were sent but couldn't produce a backup for them.

Nice timing, Dina. It's the last board meeting before a new group assumes office, with no public discussion of this proposal beforehand, and it sets things up for another quick and dirty vote by the board.

Let's hope there's a labor lawyer at tonight's meeting who can take a look at this home-styled policy and tell us if it fits within the rule of law. God knows, everything else this board has touched has fallen apart.

On the other hand, people of Chestnut Hill have a choice in who represents the public face of the Hill. On May 6 a new community group known as Chestnut Hill Neighbors United will hold a public meeting on the Hill. It proposes no dues, a policy of town hall discussion of issues and will seek consensus on zoning and other issues to take to the appropriate city authorities when there are hearings on these same issues.

Update - April 24: Choke. No quorum. No action. Copies going out Friday morning. We'll see.

Testament

2009-04-22T07:26:00.005-04:00

Richard Snowden has won the CHCA Election. The CHBA believed his Psychotic reasoning. The Local will be cleansed. Greg Welsh, in his Local piece, didn't mention that every ad for the Positively Slate was paid for by Richard. Greg's history lesson included Lincoln and Darwin.
He didn't mention Judas. He has made an alliance for his own profit that will doom others. He doesn't care. He'll have a new neighbor across the street and ten pieces of silver.

Once upon a time, people like Greg had ideals. Then the bills came and then the rationalizations, and then the lying.

I asked Greg about all of this and he changed the subject.

It's hard to take, but I guess I should be used to it by now. In the past, Greg has agreed with me about Richard's sickness. Now he works for him.

That a Jew with Greg's purported knowledge of history would lie and betray others for profit is simultaneously an irony of Biblical proportions and the reason for our reputation.

There is a phrase in Yiddish, which I will not attempt to phoneticize here. Translated it means "Shame on you for embarrassing us in front of the Christians." For so long, in all of the lands in which we have lived, we were an oppressed and endangered minority, and every action by each one of us reflected on all of us. When any of us acted shamefully, they brought shame on all of us, and endangered all of us. We were always mindful of that.

In America, over the last century, our ethical principles shifted to feel protective not only to those of our blood, but to those who shared the" kinship of experience," those for whom justice was denied, as it was denied us for so long, in so many places.

It explains our presence on the Mall behind Dr King. It explains Jewish Socialism and the Blacklist. It also explains my stand on Palestine.

For as the world turns, our alliances must also turn - from ones governed by pre-enlightenment concepts of tribalism to those of this new kinship, formed through a combination of the freedom and security America provided and the choices that security allowed us to make.

But it is also part of our tradition - Every Man a Rabbi. If you've ever eaten with us, you know what that means. We don't defer. Opinions are part of who we are. We argue about everything, because we have the right to. That, for so long, we were not allowed to speak up in so many public squares made our voices, in private, even more strident.

This tradition, this necessity of intellectual freedom has done more to diminish the numbers of believers in the shared mythology of our past than any tyrant. It is a tradition more important than the mythology. Parables are the way to teach children. It's the fish. Reasoning is the ability to fish.

And so we reason. And investigate. And if we come to a conclusion contrary to the one
accepted by the majority, then who's hewing to tradition more purely?

So when I see a mechanism that does not allow for the free airing of contrary views, I anger.
Calling it "Positive" doesn't change that. The people who stifle this freedom must be called what they are, traitors to to the First Amendment. And if one of my blood betrays those for whom I now feel a more binding kinship than that of blood, I call him traitor also.

Greg's choice was different from mine. His choice feeds into the worst stereotype from which our people suffer.

Congratulations Richard, money well spent; cheaper than Donna Reed Miller.

Goodbye, Pete, and Good Luck.

Shame on you, Greg

Ed (I ain't through yet) Feldman

Membership Duties

2009-04-21T09:47:00.005-04:00

What surprised me is that CHBA members don't have to pay for a CHCA membership. That doesn't seem right at all.

- Rev C

****************************************

Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 2:06 PM
To: "Chestnut Hill Business Assoc. Members"
Subject: Upcoming CHCA Election

Dear CHBA Members,

This is just a reminder that the Chestnut Hill Community Association election is coming up and your deadline to vote is Wednesday, April 22nd. The Chestnut Hill Business Association supports the following slate of candidates and encourages you to cast your vote for them:

Louis Aiello
Mary Regina Wedgwood
Brien Tilley
Vanessa Mullen
Christopher Padova
Arthur Howe
Lisa Webb Howe
John (Jay) Valinis
Walter J. Sullivan
Wendy S. Kern
Tom Hemphill
David Mansfield
Francis X. O’Donnell

The Business Association is also supporting the following independent candidates:

John Ingersoll
Michael Chomentowski
Stephanie Chomentowski

If you wish to join the Chestnut Hill Community Association, memberships are available to you at no cost as a benefit of your Chestnut Hill Business Association membership. Simply call the CHBA office or stop by if you are interested in the CHCA membership.

Sincerely,

Greg Welsh,
President Positively Chestnut Hill

The CHCA Board and Its Future

2009-04-19T12:10:00.000-04:00

Concerned Citizens:

The CHCA election is just around the corner and the co-conspiracy between the defenders of fraud and manipulative governance and Stepford Chestnut Hill (a/k/a Positively Chestnut Hill) have no spending limits and are using old political tactics in a full-court press to keep lies alive and truth and facts paved over.

The Hitchcock/Hemphill Axis that has run CHCA/CHCF cover for two years now merges with the Snowden development octopus with hopes that a board majority of voting robots will once again misuse authority and trust funds and at the same time make the CHCA Standing with the City a rubber stamp for one-directional development. Well, at least this time they’re open about it and you don’t need to do investigative reporting to figure it out.

This past issue of the Local contains page after page of propaganda from Bowman properties seeming to right all the wrongs of the past 10 years in one swipe (Remember those racist signs on multiple Bowman properties just a short while ago?). All of sudden we have a unified business community that was dialed out by Bowman for years, but now he needs them. Business owners and some residents alike drink the Kool-Aid that regardless of reckless arrogance and years of purposeful neglect, as long as money gets spent, who cares how or why the job is done. Believe this is just as much in the public interest as the fulfillment of a personal power trip and you are naïve. Bridges are for sale at the Business Association, or better yet are given away with your CHCA membership they will pay for - - IN EXCHANGE FOR VOTES.

Along with the development propaganda in the Local and the slate of sycophants, we have the supposed opinion commentary of CHCF trustee William J. McGuckin. My guess it was dictated. Hardly ever seen and never heard from ever in print before, he is now the outraged Joe Citizen from nearby Wyndmoor who just can’t stand Ed Feldman and Jim Foster as they don’t behave themselves like good little Nazis who salute authority, never questioning how it came about. Now, Ed and I are from the same approximate era but could not be more different, and I do not always agree with his tactics, nor he with mine, but that is what made this country what it is. What we both recognize is a narrow group of self-ordained elitists selling fraud and grabbing power by any means necessary. Yes, they have come close to fooling most of the people, most of the time, but sometimes folks will take it on the chin for what they believe is right. My favorite president in modern history, Harry Truman, did just that and left office hated by his own party and with a popularity rating lower than George Bush (Check it out). McGuckin can fabricate and manipulate the truth all he wants, worship at the shrine of Trustee Chair Jean Hemphill, and claim he has been denied facts that are public record and on the Local’s website for all to see, but Jean knows every detail of those facts about CHCA and CHCF fraud, and one can only assume hid them from these loyal soldiers. (I do know that former trustee W.W. Keen Butcher resigned days after reading the Oversight Committee report for the first time)

Nothing new here, history is replete with political campaigns using the same tactics. There has been ongoing debate for years whether it was Gobels or Stalin who coined the phrase “lies often repeated become truth,” but both used it well, and it is alive right here in your version of Mayberry U.S.A.

Jim Foster

The board discussion group sends another missile.

From: Jim Foster
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 8:36 AM
To: xxxxxx board
Subject: RE: FW: [CHCA Board] and its Future

Lou and others:

What you and many others failed to realize in the three years that have passed since the 2006 election, is that the board itself is supposed to be a constant running “Oversight Committee” on all CHCA and CHCF operations and financial decisions. That is why boards of directors are created in the first place, and why they individually can be held responsible for failing to do so. Furthermore, the legal requirements between affiliated for-profit and 501c3 entities, and the illegality of co-mingling of funds and uncontrolled conversion of assets raise that level of responsibility even higher.

No amount of denial and phony accounting can change that. The only reason a separate Oversight Committee with sunset date had to be formed was because the board and the trustees of the Fund had allowed a few insiders to run the whole show without oversight and creating a firewall where directors were denied access to financial data. Some of that firewall exists to this day.

Does any thinking person really believe that the Attorney General has nothing better to do than investigate the CHCA/CHCF? What we do learn from the recent press reports is that non-profits that misuse funds are now a priority with the Attorney General’s office.

This organization is now ripe for takeover by the business community because it refused to clean up its dirty laundry and spent more effort in the last two years burying the past under some misguided notion that Chestnut Hill runs on special privileges and that this board does not have to account for or correct its problems in public. Well, it has received state grants, has tax exemptions and runs on public money, so it is publically accountable. Those “Special District Controls” only apply to the building facades on the Avenue - - not the façade that passes for a CHCA/CHCF today.

Only a unification of the those board members who see the forest for the trees, joined with some of the new applicants who are clearly not aligned with the Snowden crowd, can keep the independent citizen control and finalize what the reform group of 2006 started. The financial condition of these entities has lost ground further since then, and that needs to be the priority discussion, not simply a new manager for the Local.

Make no mistake, the push for board takeover is massive and overt. New voting memberships have been bought and paid for by one source and one source only. Some existing members have been seduced by the siren song of money and development that will bring us Stepford on Fairmount Park. Don’t bet on it. These are the same folks who ran down the business district over the last 10 years by design only waiting for the exact moment to take full control and implement a long-standing “vision.” This is not 1980 and Chestnut Hill is much more than just the Northwest quadrant.

Those who buy this “cure all” development story have some very blurred “vision” and you don’t need bifocals to see where the train is going and who will be running the whole railroad.

Jim Foster

That was a response to this:

From: xxxxxxx.com
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 11:15 AM
To: boardxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: FW: [CHCA Board] and its Future

Hello,

If I remember correctly the Oversite Committee 'no longer' is a functional committee.. It should not function continually as a committee from the bleachers.. We really need to move on. This note of mine is not an act of disrespect toward anyone but the continuation of the former oversite players to act as an official active committee is an act of disrespect to the Board and the Community.. We need Peace desperately..

I wish everyone running for the Board the very best of luck.. Life is too short to fight continually with obsessive matters,, Lets move on folks and work together.. Lets work for the betterment of the community "One and all'.. I hope those selected by the Community prove to be great choices and that the entire Board can work together as times of old.. I remember when there was an air of confidence with the Board and within the Board itself and Community matters flourished.. I myself remember when I thought things were being done incorrectly when really they were not done incorrectly but they were done differently.

Congratulations to Ann Spaeth for being selected for the Chestnut Hill Award.. Ann your hard work and genuine Love of Community has been observed.. Always the lady.

Again, good luck to everyone.

I am on vacation 'predetermined dates' until April 25th ... I will return to a newer Board with a better hope for the community and its future. It's your job now..

Lou Aiello
Former VP of Operations 3x

Take My Job. Please ...

2009-04-17T14:36:00.006-04:00

Scott Alloway (moi) is now with Germantown Newspapers, Inc. Look for the Germantown Chronicle and the Mt. Airy Independent to be on your doorstep April 30.

Having said that, there's a job opening at the Local. E-mail Robyn at production@chestnuthilllocal.com.

From the description:

Graphic Artist

This is a temporary, part-time (M-T-F) position for a graphic artist. Primary responsibilities include advertising design and pagination of the Chestnut Hill Local newspaper. Candidates must posses a strong sense of graphic design and advertising skills. Must be familiar with working in a deadline-oriented field, able to follow instruction and be part of a team. Prefer candidate to have knowledge web design. Use of Quark, CS3 (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver ) and Adobe Acrobat. Newspaper knowledge requested but not required. Associates degree in graphic design or relevant experience dealing with the advertising and graphic design field. $12/hr

The Chestnut Hill Local is an independently owned, community newspaper.

Chestnut Hill Yokels: Tapdancing with the Stars

2009-04-13T06:00:00.002-04:00

by John Lombardi

Always liked Greg Welsh. A mensch. A tough Jew from the nabe with brains, a '60s era terror who straightened out and became a successful businessman, like Larry Magid from Electric Factory Concerts . . . I remember in 2000, when there were a series of stick-ups around the Chestnut Hill Hotel (and Grill, which he still manages), we cut a deal on coverage in the Local (which I managed at the time): "Hold off a couple of weeks, while I get some rent-a-cops in place," Greg barked over a draft beer at the Hotel bar. "Then we'll have some good news to report, instead of grim stuff that makes the neighborhood sound like it's in trouble . . ."

We did that -- the only time I've ever held a story -- and then ran it on page one. Greg was leaning on the railing of the outside porch, his arms folded, squinting at Jimmy Pack's camera like Moshe Dayan in front of a tank in Nablus. The reaction from the CHCA "safety" faction headed by Caroline Haussermann, and CHBA hardliners like saloonista Anne McNally, was horrendous : Hausserman came and screamed at me on the steep steps of the Local office at 8434 Germantown; McNally blitzed Len Lear and I when we went up the Hill to her joint to apologize for some misprints in another matter entirely . . .

I've always felt there was a classist basis to much of the bickering and undercover slander that marks Chestnut Hill's intramural fighting (I came to call it the "Phone Mafia"). And I'll never forget my ex-father-in-law, Herb Weintraub, who owned a factory and lived on Roumfort Rd., in West Mt. Airy, and liked to stroll the SEPTA tracks toward Chestnut Hill East to digest dinner; he'd always stop at the Chestnut Hill/Mt. Airy line, however: "You don't wanna go over there, Johnny," he'd warn. "Those people are crazy!" And that was 33 years ago.

Didn't like Jews, wops, blacks, Indians, Polacks -- though they were tolerated in benign forms like Frankie Smacks, the barber, or Lou Aiello, the fixer-upper guy and perennial CHCA gofer, or Dr. Arlene Bennett, the psychiatrist and former community activist . . . they'd even let you "edit" the Local , if you obeyed orders . . .

There's certainly been some progress: Sanjiv Jain and his minion Vijay Kothare, both active in the "developer" sphere, have been allowed to play the Chestnut Hill business game, which came on in force starting with the late Maurice McCarthy, an insurance agent and Dem politico, and his partner Tolis Vardakis, the about-to-retire president of the CHCA, nine years ago. That's when the Civil Code was introduced, a rule which further restricted free expression in the paper than anything thought of previously, during the tight-butt Lloyd Wells era . I remember being dumbfounded by the readiness with which prominent Hillers like Janine Dwyer, Mary Sue Welsh, Mary Anna Ross etc. -- her name is too long to print -- and Mary Cunningham, accepted the ban on names in "controversial" letters and stories in the Local. All for the sake of a more "mannerly," less "hostile" "dialogue."

How names contribute to hostility in a free press still beats me, but the selectively dumbed-down pattern for today was set then -- though insiders like Jain and Kothare could get away with calling opponents like Lawrence Walsh, Martha Haley and Ron Recko, plus "rebellious" staffers like Jim Sturdivant and Jimmy Pack "parasites" and "terrorists," and act to drive them out.

Historically, the CHBA has always been more conservative than the CHCA, but then both groups had the advantage of boasting men of the quality of F. Markoe Revinus , and Keen Butcher in the old days.

In the present, you've got Richard Snowden, backing the "Positively Chestnut Hill" election slate. People like Ed Feldman see him as Mephistopheles, the root of all evil on the Hill, though when he was gone south to play with his coal mines recently, for long periods, things didn't markedly improve. I say Snowboy is a spoiled brat, still angry with the Local for a mildly critical story by the present editor some years ago, which he's never forgiven -- for reasons best left to Dr. Bennett to explain. Why Snowden isn't going after Charlie McCoy and the Inquirer investigators who blew him out of the water publically shortly after the softball Local story appeared, is a measure of his seriousness. He probably figures he might be able to wangle some payback in Chestnut Hill's perpetual soap opera, rather than in real life.

Greg Welsh, who is the president of the CHBA, told me recently he came up with the idea of the PCH slate, as an alternative to the candidates already in place behind the Dina Hitchcock crew -- my words, not his -- because he and a group of businessmen were tired of the constant fights, and "lack of forward motion", lack of transparency, etc., under Dina's direction. (Again, my words.) "Of those 63 votes from last year's election? -- oi vey! is all I can say. Not illegal, but . . ."

Welsh claimed not to know the identity of the associate publisher who is coming to the Local from the Delaware Valley Times shortly, but said he felt the paper would not be "taken over" by CHBA thinking, and that the editor's job was not in jeopardy: "Hey, where are we gonna go? He knows the job, he knows the community . . . He could be a little more of a mensch, but what you gonna do? . . ."

And Now, a Brief Intermission ...

2009-04-10T23:02:00.005-04:00

A break from the regular fare, featuring Reverend Chris Marsceill and the Naked Nuns with Katie Drake playing "What is Success." Videoed at Hill Tavern in Chestnut Hill, one great place with the best burgers in town. Shout out to Mo and Alex, as well as the chef and owners. A wonderful place owned and operated by great people. Consider this an unabashed endorsement. Not that we would slight Rollers, another top spot in Chestnut Hill.

If you haven't been there, make sure you make it a point to do so. Great food and people. It's a top-shelf restaurant in Chestnut Hill. It can't be recommended enough. Don't waste your time elsewhere up there.

As for the music, Rev. Chris will be back next weekend with solo gigs. But there are other performers as well so check it out.

Forgive Them. They Know Not What They Do ...

2009-04-10T16:00:00.009-04:00

An examination of the first and second editions of the minutes of the February 12, 2009, Chestnut Hill Community Association Executive Committee meeting at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill showed two renditions of what transpired when the committee addressed the issue of the editor of the Local. In both sets of the minutes, they appear right after the Search Committee section under Old Business. The twin sets of minutes as a whole are identical, except for the section addressing the Local editor "performance review" or "memorandum to the editor," as they are labeled in their respective versions.

Last night the CHCA executive committee voted on which may be deemed the official version of events that February evening. The first is the original take; the second is the rewrite the executive committee approved last night (April 9, 2009). How appropriate the decision (a 3-1 vote - Dina Hitchcock did not cast the tie-breaker as previously reported to us) fell on Maundy Thursday. Were they were meeting in a garden when all this transpired? And who denied what three times?

I can hear it now: "History is what we say it is." It worked for them last year when the CHCA election featured destroyed ballots, voting irregularities and a rebuke of any who dared question the association.

Examine these for yourselves. This is how your community is presented to the world at large. You have an option. It's Chestnut Hill Neighbors United and they will be holding a Town Meeting on May 6. More on that later, as we said in a prior post.

Members of the Chestnut Hill Community: Ask the board who rewrote these minutes. Ask them why the accounts of the section on the editor are so different. Ask them what happened with the memorandum. Then ask yourself if you want to be a part of an organization whose leadership has no sense of right or wrong.

Minutes.

Original Executive Committee Edition.

February 16, 2009

CHCA Executive Committee Meeting. Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009
Performance Review of Editor. Tolis [Vardakis] mentioned that all members of the Executive Committee should have signed a memorandum that was sent to Pete Mazzaccaro on February 5, stating whether or not they agree with the content of the memorandum. Tolis also stated that the lack of signatures has happened previously, citing two examples from June 2008 (the action plan) and May 2007 (salary increases). In the ensuing discussion, points that were raised included:
• Two wrongs don't make a right; there never was a meeting to discuss the February 5th memorandum.
• The Executive Committee can only offer recommendations for Board approval for personnel and other matters. In the past, employee terminations have been approved by the Executive Committee. The bylaws state that the Executive Committee must "report its actions"; the implication is that it must have taken actions.
• Three limited instances in which the Executive Committee may act without Board approval were cited from the bylaws.
• The memorandum in question was written with authorization from the Board. • In the interest of transparency, actions regarding the Editor's employment should be taken by the full Board, since the position of Editor is a more public position. The message to the Editor can be considered "threatening."
• According to a statement from the Local's attorney read at last month's Board meeting, the Local is at high risk of having to face legal action for using inflammatory language about people.
• The attorney's statement was "privileged and confidential" and for Board members only.
• The "case" for termination was not well made.
• The Secretary needs to document motions and specific vote tallies for those in favor, those opposed, and those abstaining, but the vote was not tallied at last month's executive session regarding termination.
• Arguments regarding process can be at the cost of enacting changes needed to save the Local.
• An article appearing in the Local in 1977 stated that an annual review of the paper is appropriate.
• Pete has been invited to address the full Board at its meeting on February 26.
• It is proper management to provide timely feedback to employees, with more frequent reviews after a negative evaluation.
• How should risk management and insubordination be addressed?

Mark Keintz then offered a motion to approve and re-issue the memorandum to the Editor and report delivery of this document to the full Board at its meeting on February 26; this motion was seconded by Dina Hitchcock. Mark read from the section of the bylaws regarding responsibilities of the Executive Committee. Ron suggested instead that the memorandum in question be placed on the agenda for the board meeting so that the Board can approve it and then give it to the Editor. Dina then offered a motion to call the question (end discussion); this motion was seconded and passed with 4 votes in favor, none opposed, and 1 abstention (Ron Recko). Mark's original motion received 4 votes in favor, 1 vote opposed (Ron Recko), and no abstentions.

Minutes prepared by Noreen Spota, CHCA Administrative Coordinator, on 2/16/09.

Respectfully submitted on _________ by:
Kristina Sullivan
CHCA Secretary

Alternative History (Winning Entry)

Minutes.

Adjusted Executive Committee Edition.

February 23, 2009

Memorandum to the Editor. The issue of the February 5 Memorandum to the Editor was brought up. The question first suggested was that the Executive Committee members should sign it in order to make it complete since the approval of all except one member was not done at a formal meeting. It was agreed that that was unnecessary now that the Executive Committee was meeting and could again consider the matter. The facts leading up to the Memorandum were brought out. Those facts include the following. The Executive Committee had reviewed the performance of the Editor and in June of 2008 developed an Action Plan for him, of which the Board had been notified at that time and again advised at the January 2009 Board meeting. (A copy of that 2-page Action Plan is attached to these minutes.) The Executive Committee met with the Editor in early December to re-review his progress on the Action Plan. Before the Executive Committee could give its formal re-assessment to the Editor (i.e., some progress, some areas still needing work), another serious employee matter associated with the termination of an employee and with the conduct of that individual witnessed by the Editor and associated with the Editor occurred and it was thought best to bring the matter of the Editor's progress to the Board at its January meeting. At the end of that Board meeting, Cathy Pimpinella volunteered to review the June 2008 evaluation and Action Plan and to draft a Corrective Action Plan, and the Board agreed. She reviewed those materials and drafted this Memorandum. Our counsel then reviewed that Memorandum and suggested certain revisions which were incorporated into the Memorandum which the Executive Committee issued February 5 to the Editor. That Memorandum to him was denoted, "Personal and Confidential." The Memorandum was part of the ongoing process in accordance with the Bylaws VI I a ("The Executive Committee... reviews the job performance of the Association's employees at least once each year.") It was questioned why more than one review is necessary and the point was brought out that an "employee at risk" should be reviewed more often to support that employee in the execution of their Action Plan. At this point after a discussion pro and con, Mark Keintz made the following Motion, seconded by Dina Hitchcock: "The Executive Committee hereby re-issues the Memorandum directed to the Editor issued February 5." After further discussion Dina Hitchcock moved to call the question which motion was duly seconded. The motion to call the question carried by a vote of 4 in favor, 0 against, and 2 abstaining (the President only yes or no votes in the event of a tie). The main Motion was then adopted by a vote of 4 yes, 1 no, and 1 abstention (the President again abstaining because there was not a tie).

Respectfully submitted on 2/23/09 by:
Kristina Sullivan
CHCA Secretary

Let's Find the Connections

2009-04-09T13:52:00.004-04:00

So by now you've read the CHBA's candidates reasons for running, except for Art Howe's, who clutched at the opportunity of free advertising space to shill every business he has ever been involved with except his first lemonade stand, never mentioning Chestnut Hill once. He also declined to give the Snowden Seig Heil, "And that's why I'm Positively Chestnut Hill," at the end of his Resumé ... er, bio.

He figured, if you were too dumb to figure out that his wife and fellow candidate was a Snowden tenant, then you were too dumb to realize his reason for running as well. Candidate Wendy Kern gives Bowman-Snowden Properties as a client reference on her website, but not on the candidates bio. That's funny.

See how easy this is? It took me six minutes to find this much out. I'll get the rest of the connections made shortly. But Kids - you can play too!

Let's find all the connections between Prince Richard and his candidates - It's Easy - It's Fun! And you can make people who are trying to fool you look foolish!

Ed (If the Local won't do it, I guess I'll have to) Feldman

Will the Last Candidate Left Turn Out the Lights?

2009-04-08T18:40:00.008-04:00

That drip, drip, drip you hear is the ink sliding off the printed ballots for the Chestnut Hill Community Association board of directors election, the culmination of which comes at the $30 a head dinner and annual meeting (meeting is free, food extra) on April 22.

What started out with the promise of a spirited campaign (even as last year's disgrace to democracy fades into memory) now has the potential to lack sufficient candidates to fill all the open seats. At the close of the March 20 deadline for a spot on the ballot, we understand there were 27 candidates. Yesterday, April 7, there were 22 people running. Today, there are 21. Two candidates left to work with the new association, Chestnut Hill Neighbors United. One left due to family considerations. Can't say about the other missing hopefuls. Today's former wannabe, a source told us, left because demands on his schedule precluded his being able to fulfill the obligations of the office. Guess he hasn't been paying attention to how things operate.

Don't even try to spin this trend - and the dearth of community involvement in the election - as a tacit endorsement of the CHCA status quo. The economy isn't the only thing that's fallen off a cliff. Trust went right along with it. You [the current CHCA management] pushed it over the edge.

Joel Hoffmann, Award-Winning Journalist

2009-04-08T14:18:00.005-04:00

Chestnut Hill Local reporter Joel Hoffmann has been honored by the Pennsylvania Newspapers Association with the "Distinguished Writing - Weekly" award for his work over the last year. PNA cited his pieces "Caruso's Checks Out Indefinitely," "Unspinning the Political Candidates," and "Debate Continues" in the announcement.

PNA judge Tom Hallman of the Oregonian, 2001 Pulitzer Prize winner for Feature Writing, assessed Hoffman's work as follows:

Hoffman writes with voice and passion. HE comes across as fearless, and serves an important role in the community he covers. His opening paragraph on the Caruso's story highlights all his skills: Setting a scene, an eye for details and a way of putting the reader "there," and driving home the implications of this story. Hoffman is an interesting read. Never boring.

Joel earned the award through diligent research, hard work and a flair for putting his stories together in a clear and thoughtful fashion. Congratulations, Joel. You earned this.

Award-winning journalist Joel Hoffmann. Sounds good. At least someone is paying attention to good work.

Update: A reader explains the basis of the award. I'll add it here for those who don't check comments.

Distinguished Writing Award, Weeklies – The purpose of this award is to showcase quality writing. The award is judged solely on the quality of writing, without regard to circulation or category. The rules for entering this category follow the general rules and the entry mounting rules of the Keystone Press Awards contest.

The following also apply:
The contest is open to individual writers only; no team entries. Entries must include three pieces of work, and may include various types of articles. Work that has been entered in any other category (news, column, series, etc.) is acceptable. Any type of article may be entered, including those not listed in the entry categories.