I’d agree that she was using the last office strategically and in the last stretch, higher office was part of it. But the Budget Director office? That’d be a reach.

And even if she was, I’d still rather someone whose political aspirations started in smaller, lesser known offices where they spent years acquiring substantial understanding of how the city’s bureaucracy works (or doesn’t) and using their skills and experience to produce paper trails of documentation re: mismanagement in the system and areas that need attention and reform.

I haven’t seen anyone else running produce research and reports (which are, effectively, her way of announcing what her “plan is for that’, especially if you believe she was using that office as a springboard).

And yeah, a lot of them have been targeted at the PPD, because that’s where a lot of the big waste and mismanagement is at. But she’s done the same for much smaller - ACCT comes to mind. Not even the council person assigned to ACCT gives a shit about ACCT.

Edit: And you don’t have to be in love with any of the candidates. But one of them is going to be the next mayor.

There’s no option C where if you’re salty enough about your choices, the universe has to deliver a new candidate that’s also your new best friend.

You can pick your least worst choice or sit it out and let other people pick one for you. Those are your two options, short of running yourself.

You asked for “one”, not a list. And yeah, it’s a mess right now, I’ll agree to that.

I’ll be glad when the pettier bullshit like this dies down and we can see who is left standing to actually make a decision about. At the moment, unless it’s revealing an actual problem (like say, the Jeff Brown article posted earlier), I’m not bothering with any of this high school bullshit in my evaluation.

It is hard to demonstrate to the public. But one way of doing that is by actually having chosen to do it and showing up with a track record of experience in a relevant field. Like, say, Rhynhart, who is currently high on my list.

City Controller is traditionally not a high profile job, and is exactly the kind of bullshit I’d like a mayor to be good at. Same for Budget Director, and she did good work there under Nutter.

The fact that she and Kenney seem to hate each other is just a bonus.

Again, that’s optics. A thing most politicians at a high enough level hire staff to take care of. It’s just not a big deal to me.

And it would require her to keep silent when the Union League does something shitty, which they do on the regular. And to me, that’s a bigger failing than a PR whoopsie.

It’s not any kind of straw. Announcing that the Union League organization sucks and can kick rocks is something that happens all the time here. I’d be shocked if she hasn’t made similar public statements in the past.

And never setting foot in any building owned by assholes that she’s rightly criticized precludes her from running for office in Philadelphia.

Gym’s not my first choice, and probably not even my second. But I do want to vote for someone that isn’t a fan of the Union League, and I’m not going to get mad at them for doing the kind of bare minimum public appearances every politician has to do if they’re going to successfully run for office. It’s not an ideological purity contest.

So if she showed up say, three weeks later, it’d be ok?

And yeah, it’s a dumb move in that it opened the door for someone even dopier to dunk on her. But if nobody actually seriously expects her to never walk through those doors again, it’s an issue of timing and optics. But that amounts to a PR error, which is a dumb thing to get too worked up about

That’s where I stand too. My biggest complaint with Krasner is that he and his top level staff are all big-idea people, and aren’t really interested in the boring work of management and bureaucracy. I support his big ideas, but that boring work absolutely has to be done for those big ideas to succeed.

I think that’s especially true for mayor. I’ll happily take someone that’s a more moderate progressive than I am if I think they’re good at and interested in the boring thankless work that’s invisible labor if you do it right but still really, really needs to be done.

Yeah, the Union League as an organization can suck my fat Philly tits. But it’s located in a gorgeous building that is well-located for events like this, which is why it’s constantly being used for events like this.

Declaring that politicians can’t ever go inside the building unless they’ve never criticized the organization basically just prevents politicians from making the criticism, because going into that building to do facetime with groups like this is part of their job.

Given that the article doesn’t clarify a relationship otherwise, I’m not seeing anything here that’s more than a cosmetic problem

It’s also among the more basic and universal things PhD students get. If a school isn’t offering tuition remission to PhD students they use for labor, then they’re doing something very, very unusual or it’s a program where graduate work is structured very differently than most disciplines.

Its not something to brag about. It’s probably the most bare minimum form of compensation for working PhD students in higher education.

I’m more curious what the Associated General Contractors Association’s relationship is with the Union League.

Gym’s not my first pick in this race, but I’m not gonna get too mad at anyone just for going into a rented building owned by assholes they’ve criticized. It’s bad optics in that it opens the door for articles like this.

But running for office means going to to campaign events to talk to special interest groups. And more often than not, those events happen in some rich dick who sucks’ building.

Unless her relationship with the Association, or the Association’s relationship with the Union League is the issue (the article doesn’t really detail either) this isn’t like, a devastating takedown that fundamentally alters my impression of her. It’s an expose that she’s … running for office?

Every last one of the candidates, if they stick around long enough, is going to wind up in that building at some point or another, or somewhere just as bad.

It’s a good thing we can fix that by lying about the law to people that refuse to read it themselves.

You see, there’s a pizza basement that isn’t a basement and you can buy it on Wayfair and the basement’s name is Cynthia.

And if you subtract some of those letters (the ones that are Satan letters) and only count the Angel letters in that sentence, and then multiply the number of those letters by 48, and then repeat the resulting number in a public library while spinning in circles until you barf and fall over, you’ll fall through the trap door where I’m just hanging out, eatin’ babies and high-fiving copies of the NAMBLA magazine that all of my income goes to support.

Because that’s how we support pedophilia. It’s a way more effective way of doing it than say, eliminating and eroding age of consent laws, or making sure kids don’t get access to sex education, or making sure they can’t have discussions about consent with trusted mandated reporters in the school system.

There’s nothing in the driving equity bill or any other local bill stopping any officer from pulling over a car with tints that violate the state limit. They’re just not doing it.

Especially with the field as crowded as it is right now. Primary voters pay attention, and right now, they have a lot of options.

Brown isn’t bringing anything to the table that’s so unique or special that any primary voter has to look far to find a suitable replacement for whatever it is that they maybe liked about him.

If that’s what he meant, that’s what he should have said. Like the candidates that said that did.

He’s simultaneously actually thinking that the police don’t need any more funding and that more funding for the police is his #1 priority?

I believe he’s worked up about shoplifting and the soda tax because those affect his personal bottom line. But other than that, he’s just telling everybody he gets put in front of what he thinks they want to hear.

I mean, it definitely sometimes works! But I’d rather vote for someone whose campaign strategy isn’t “fuck it, I’ll just say whatever, they’re all idiots anyway”.

Oh, oops. Yeah, copy/paste fuckup right there. Thanks for the catch, doing an edit.

I meant Brown, but them too, yeah.

But also, in a different room, no more money for the police. And for the love of god, let’s make sure the driving equity bill stops doing the things it doesn’t do and starts doing the things it doesn’t not do.

Or tinted windows either.

Dude either doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or he’s lying about the law because he knows people like to hear lies about the law.

Either way, not a good look.

“When an attendee chimed in, saying: “They don’t know who they’re voting for,” Brown responded in agreement: ‘I don’t think they really know.’”

That has the ring of something he actually believes at least.

You could read the article. It’s not entirely complimentary.

The material about police funding is in the first two paragraphs.

“One week ago, Philadelphia mayoral candidate Jeff Brown told voters in West Philadelphia that he’d oppose increasing the nearly $800 million Police Department budget, saying: “We have enough money in the police budget.”

Then on Tuesday night, when Brown spoke to a group of Northeast Philadelphia voters, he was asked if “more police and more money for police” is a priority.

“It’s the No. 1 priority right now,” he said.”

Oh, man. I haven’t thought about this in years, but someone did an interview re: punk music in the peak Green Day years, the gist of which was dunking on bands full of grown ass adults complaining that their dads were making them do their homework. Does anyone else remember this with more specificity?

When someone asks you how much you “make” do you subtract expenses first and only state your year end profit? Or are you hung up on “revenue”, which is the word for what that figure represents?

And top level staff absolutely does make their money in Philly and take it somewhere else, regardless of their company’s revenue or net profit year to year, and that is where it gets taxed for the purposes of this discussion (this process of taking something from somewhere where it is created and moving it somewhere else is also known as extraction).

Again - the richest guy in the whole state has his HQ out of Philly, but is not living here. He lives in Montgomery County. Philly’s biggest companies are almost all headed by executives making millions of dollars, but who live over the border, and the same can be said of their second tier staff. Dude that owns the Philadelphia Eagles (personal net worth in the $3-$4 billion range)? Montgomery County. The billionaire that owns most of the Phillies? Bryn Mawr.

In 2019, seven of the city’s biggest corporations (which includes Aramark) spent $2 billion across 19 categories of locally deliverable goods and services (construction, IT, security/public safety, pest control services, courier services, catering, architecture/design, lab supplies, facilities management, communications/public relations, business advisory consulting, special event planning, lobbying, accounting, personal protective equipment, legal services, and insurance.). Only 22.5% of that money was spent within the city.

Lots of money is made in Philadelphia - but a ton of it gets funneled directly out to the suburbs.