Philadelphia in Decline
Thursday, April 17, 2025
I am old enough to remember when major U.S. cities were in bad shape, particularly during the 1970's. It looks like Philadelphia is heading in that direction again, with significant retail closures: convenience stores, department stores. The stores and traditional media don't seem to be mentioning the causes, but they are a combination of
- retail theft
- homelessness and crime
- work-from-home policies
- online shopping
The first one reduces profits, and the others reduce customers. It is hard for a city to prevent decline with so many negative forces. The city government can improve the first two items, but they don't seem to be even mentioning these as causes (punishing some crimes is discouraged), which means things will get worse until the actual causes are addressed.
It is possible the last two negative forces are so strong that there is no hope of recovery, and the government is just going to ride the train to the bottom. Speaking of trains, the Philadelphia regional transportation authority (septa) is planning a 45% service cut to reduce its deficit — ridership has not recovered to pre-covid levels, and there is no anticipation it ever will.
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Saturday, March 29, 2025
If Donald Trump had won the 2020 presidential election, his second term would have been similar to his first, though likely less energetic, as second-term presidential terms usually are. Because he lost in 2020, he had four years to reflect on his first term, and consider how he could do better in his second. Living in Trump's second term, we can now see the results of this planning — a pace of change that is unprecedented in modern history.
The opposition Democrat party is struggling in how to respond to an increasingly popular Trump second term. How do they slow down Trump or make him less popular, and how do they do it while looking noble? Normally, some plausible goal like "saving the children," "preserving the environment," or "protecting marginalized groups" is used as cover to promote actions that harm your opponents. Unfortunately for the Democrats, they can't seem to find any plausible goals to attack Trump's agenda, so they have latched on to an action that runs counter to some of their previously stated goals.
Destroying Teslas is meant to show their disapproval of Elon Musk's DOGE effort to reduce wasteful government spending. However, such action runs counter to several previously rational goals, and opens the question of whether Democrats ever really believed in these goals:
With the popularity of the Democrat party already at historic lows, it seems being associated with and not condemning Tesla attacks will lead the party to be associated even more negative characteristics: environmental damage, government waste, and property crime.
Even the individuals perpetrating these crimes are choosing to attack something that will likely cause them to be caught — a vehicle that has its own constantly-on surveillance cameras. They might hope that local prosecutors will not charge them for political reasons, but because these crimes are clearly intended to intimidate owners, the federal government might prosecute those who local prosecutors refuse to prosecute.
Today is a day of planned, coordinated protests — let's hope they are peaceful. None of this ends well for anyone: Telsa owners, Telsa workers, Tesla attackers, and the political party that thinks these attacks will harm Trump's agenda. The only winner in all of this is Trump and his party, who look like the only rational actors in this mess.
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As an Armenian, I have heard about the Armenian genocide since I was a child, but always in pieces. These four videos (1, 2, 3, and 4) give a comprehensive summary of the event. For example, my relatives left Turkey for New Jersey in 1895, and many other Armenians also came to the Philadelphia area during that time, but it was never clear to me why. I learned from these videos that it was the Hamidian massacres that prompted them to leave. Those massacres were a precursor to the genocide which would happen 20 years later.
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