New Philly handgun

Send someone to hellie with this new cellie, brought to you by Nokia and the City of Brotherly Shove, Philadelphia. I got this over e-mail today, and I just laughed at the irony - Philly is now well over 300 murders for 2007. The only question now is, how high will it go?

I don't mean to trivialize death, but this city is on the brink of being out of control. Here's hoping new mayor Michael Nutter can restore control.

Philly casino buffer vote is in

The vote for the Philly Casino buffer zone is in, and it's a landslide - denizens of Philadelphia overwhelmingly voted in support of a 1,500' buffer zone from schools, churches and homes.

The final count:
13,319 "successful" votes were cast (meaning, they were identified as belonging to a registered voter in Philadelphia).

And of those, 12,592 voted for a 1,500-foot buffer between slots parlors and homes and neighborhoods. 727 opposed the buffer.

Most of the votes - 9,446 - were at the bright-red ballot boxes in the city.

The vote is not binding - the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court saw to that.

A bit of background on the casino issue, from Philly's Ballot Box Website:

In the final hours of the 2004 PA Legislative session, the Gaming Act was passed. Unlike most states that implement slots gambling, Pennsylvania did not give residents a chance to vote on whether they supported the expansion of gambling in our state.

The Gaming Act, also known as Act 71, included the possibility of two slots parlors in Philadelphia, but did not include any standards for how these mega-projects, which include 24/7 liquor licenses, free drinks, 5,000-car parking garages and 6 million visitors a year, could be developed. The PA Supreme Court upheld the right of Philadelphia to determine the siting and zoning controls of the proposed casinos in their 2005 decision.

Early this year, Casino-Free Philadelphia volunteers collected over 27,000 signatures, which encouraged the Philadelphia City Council to place the buffer-zone question on the May 15th ballot. The Council voted unanimously to place it on the ballot, including unanimously overriding Mayor John Street's veto. The City of Philadelphia began preparing for the election and printed up ballots that include Question # 1, giving Philadelphians the opportunity to set minimal standards for how slots gambling will be implemented in Philadelphia. This represents the only vote that any Pennsylvanian will get on the expansion of gambling in our state.

Then on Friday, April 13th, the PA Supreme Court placed a temporary injunction on Question #1 without any published rationale, causing confusion among voters and citizen groups.

Casino-Free Philadelphia created Philly's Ballot Box to organize a citizen-run election in the event that the Supreme Court permanently removes Question #1 from the City ballot.

Now, the question is, where does the city go from here? That won't likely be determined until the city gets a new mayor, which will either be Democrat Michael Nutter or Republican Al Taubenberger. At any rate, the casino issue will be a sticky one for the next mayor of Philadelphia.

For more information and for continuous updates on casinos in Philadelphia, go to Casino-Free Philadelphia.

Nutter's the one

Michael Nutter has won the Philadelphia Mayoral Primary by a pretty wide margin. I'm pretty happy to see that - he received two votes in our house. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a relative neophyte to Philly politics, and I'm not sure we'll live here long enough to really become deeply involved, but at least have a passing interest in how our new mayor will handle regentrification, crime, taxes and other issues.

It's hardly a stretch to say that Nutter will almost certainly become the next mayor of Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love has not elected a Republican mayor since 1948 - a drought of 59 years. I'm interested to see if former Republican mayoral nominee Sam Katz will enter the race - there have been rumors that he could enter as a third party candidate. If Katz does, he'd better bring his putter against Nutter - he'll need it the day after the election. (Sorry - it's tough to rhyme with Nutter - let's see how the Philly press does with it.)

I just hope that Nutter truly is the outsider he paints himself to be - this city needs a great deal of cleaning up from the eight-year disaster called the Street administration.

Election results chart via Phillynews.com

Here's why Michael Nutter is getting my vote in today's Philadelphia Mayoral Primary

Up until a few days ago, I was undecided on who was going to get my vote in today's Democratic Mayoral Primary. However, Tom Knox made my decision pretty easy when I started receiving anti-Michael Nutter propaganda in the mail a few weeks ago. Here's just a sample of what I received. Above is the front cover, and below is the back cover.

Inside was all sorts of smear and garbage about Nutter. I was on the fence, until I got this stuff in the mail.

We'll see who prevails - so far, Philly.com's Website is reporting that turnout is very low.

The great thing about tonight's election coverage is that I won't have to see Brian Tierney on TV, telling us what he thinks about the election, since he is now CEO of the company that owns the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer.