Mayor Street is incompetent

Ok, everyone in Philly knows that Mayor Street is incompetent, and that the only reason he was re-elected was that the unions and the African-American population of Philadelphia would never vote for a white Republican. His latest blunder involves the smoking-ban in city restaurants and bars. Just this past weekend, he announced that the ban would go into effect on Monday, September 25.
Fine. The law was passed by city council months ago, and Mayor Street waited until the very last minute to sign it into effect. Initially it was announced that the law would actually take effect January 7, 2007. Great. That would give everyone a nice transition period into the smoking ban.
But, in an act that can only be considered political grandstanding, Mayor Street puts the no-smoking law into effect in only a week's time. Now, this would be fine if they had used the many months that the bill sat on Street's desk to prepare. But, no. The city is absolutely unprepared to deal with this new law. The Health Department has no formal waiver process for "drinking establishments" and "private clubs." There is no enforcement task force in place. There was no formal announcement sent to restaurant and bar owners, unless you count ABC6 Local News a formal announcement. Even the City Hall website is devoid of any announcement about the law. Just Street's ugly mug and muffin-top hair-do smiling away at how healthy the city will be.
This is just another piece of evidence in the mounting case that Mayor Street never had the appropriate foresight to run a city. Right now, it looks like Michael Nutter is the leading (and possibly only candidate) to succeed Mayor Street. He was the real force behind the smoking-ban, and has come out to criticize the Mayor for a) sitting on the bill for so long and b) haphazardly initiating the ban without thinking of the city and it's business owners. I for one, will be thankful when Street's reign of mismanagement and borderline corruption is over.

Back Again?

Well, we'll see if this lasts longer than the one day that my last blogging comeback lasted. Hmmm.


I don't really have any of my usual topics to write about. I guess I'll wait until tomorrow to get fired-up about something. The one thing that has kind of pissed me off this weekend is the fact that my in-laws wait forever to cash a check. We have a loan from our in-laws to do some work on our house, and payment is due promptly at the first of each month. And, believe me, if the check isn't there by the second of the month we get a phone call asking if we forgot to send the check. Today I looked at the bank statement, and they still haven't cashed the check from September 1st. Back in July, they waited until the 22nd to cash the July and June checks.

Well that was throughly unsatisfying. Guess I am not angry enough.