PHILADELPHIA

Philadelphia is at the centre of the rise of the USA.

The place of the Liberty Bell, the great debates about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as well as the latter’s signing. The first capital of the nation, during both the American Revolution and then for a decade while Washington D.C. was constructed just down the coast.

All that history and meaning, and now this:

The Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia – known as ‘ground zero’ for the city’s drug epidemic – is in crisis due to widespread abuse of an animal tranquilizer called xylazine. Addicts are shooting up in broad daylight, hunched over in a stupor or passed out on the streets. Many have raw, gaping wounds in desperate need of medical attention. And there are needles, syringes and garbage littered across the sidewalks.

‘I’ve never seen human beings remain in these kinds of conditions,’ said Sarah Laurel, who runs outreach organization Savage Sisters.

You have to see the photos and videos to believe it. The strange effect of these newish drugs is to leave people standing but bent over, with their arms hanging down, like Zombies.

Almost two years ago a local member of Congress, Mary Gay Scanlon (Penn 5th) was actually carjacked at gunpoint in a city park. She was not hurt, let alone shot, and actually thanked the Police, which is quite change for a woman who jumped on the George Floyd Defund The Police bandwagon in 2020. But like almost all the other Democrats in this series on crime, she will learn nothing from this.

Meantime things are no better in the other great Pennsylvania city, Pittsburgh, where another Democrat encountered crime via a homeless man’s attack on a groom in a hotel lobby, leaving the latter critically injured. Unlike Ms Scanlon this seems to have made a mark on the Democrat’s thinking:

“In all my years of living in and visiting Pittsburgh, I have never seen the Downtown look so bad. Empty, dirty, and unsafe. Personally, I experienced an attempted homicide in the lobby of my hotel on Forbes Avenue and was accosted twice walking to my office in Gateway Center,” he wrote.

In an interview with me Thursday, it was clear the respected media pro and prominent Democrat was rattled by the city’s descent, particularly because it was upending its very heart — “A city is only as strong its core.”

Great, but what he saw was not new, aside from the attack being a fancy hotel lobby. Why had he not noticed the following scenes before that the reporter has:

A drive throughout the city in mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and in the evening found a city in decay. Homelessness isn’t hidden; it is prevalent. Patches of open-air drug markets are brazenly conducted, the smell of urine and feces is prevalent, and reports of small businesses calling it quits grow in frequency.

Two weeks ago the once acclaimed women’s clothing boutique Peter Lawrence, a hopeful anchor for what city officials hoped would be a women’s shopping district along Wood Street, announced it is closing five years after it opened, with the owner telling the Pittsburgh Post Gazette his workers were “scared to work there a little bit” because of the frequent homelessness and drug trafficking.

The businesses that are not fleeing, yet, are not requiring their workers to come into the city to do their jobs, which has led to a whopping historic high 22.5% vacancy rate, according to a report conducted by real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

Just like NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and on and on with the Democrat cities, and with the same root causes:

At the center of this collapse is Mayor Ed Gainey, who after taking office in January of 2022 has done little to nothing to address the city’s collapse. He is surrounded by people who are so wedded to ideology and the social justice movement that they failed to realize that you actually have to govern to run a city.

Six months ago, the last and only time Gainey addressed Pittsburgh’s slide in front of hundreds of downtown stakeholders, business owners, foundations, and downtown residents, Gainey attempted to use stats to tell everyone in attendance to basically not believe their lying eyes.

As one downtown resident told former deputy mayor and well-regarded Democrat Joe Mistick in frustration after the meeting, “We live here. We’re here every day. We know that’s not true.”

Apparently Gainey is a great orator so perhaps we’ll see him on a National level in a few years, especially since he’s heavily plugged into a key, nationwide Democrat union:

Gainey has steadfastly refused to meet with the largest employer in the city, UPMC, unless they agree to allow the SEIU to represent hospital workers, according to a detailed report done by KDKA investigative reporter Andy Sheehan. It is a curious decision to refuse to meet with the largest employer in the city and makes you wonder if he is the mayor of Pittsburgh or the mayor of SEIU.

The answer is the latter, which is why he may rise in Democrat ranks despite the utter failure of his city.

WASHINGTON D.C.

This city is unique in that it’s not really in charge of itself as the others are, meaning that it is very dependent on the Federal government that resides in its heart. which is what made this story so very special:

Representative Angie Craig wants to know why a Democrat-run city permitted a recidivist violent criminal to be free to attack law-abiding, productive citizens.

You’re not going to believe this — seriously, please lie down on a couch and scatter poofy pillows around it in case this news cause you to fall from the couch — but the man who assaulted Representative Angie Craig in the elevator of her building has a rich and vibrant history of assaulting people, including sexually, and has yet to see any serious time for his serial infractions. Hold on to that couch! Grip the arms with all your strength!

Oh no, Angie, you mean that Democrats are just letting criminals attack citizens again and again and just letting them out of jail every single time? Glad you’re now bringing this to the attention of your fellow Democrats and now you can get them to reverse the last few years of applying their criminal theories – you arrogant, entitled, ignorant piece of shit.

Despite being in Congress for five terms now she must never have gone to Union Station, where she would have seen hundreds of examples of her party’s failure on crime and homelessness. But then her President and his team were also so clueless that he did one of his last 2022 Mid-Term campaign stops there:

Just seven years ago, I interned down the street from Union Station. At lunchtime, the travel hub was packed to the brim with local employees looking for a quick bite or a coffee. Shoppers trolled the mid- to high-end retail stores. The Metro, bus and train platforms bustled with commuters.

Now, Union is essentially a ghost town. Thanks to a combination of neglectful law enforcement and a refusal to relocate the homeless encampments, the station has been overrun with drug-addicted and mentally-ill vagrants. It’s nearly impossible to enter Union Station without being accosted by a crazy person or, at the very least, walking through a cloud with the rank odor of feces and urine. It’s not uncommon to see one of the “individuals experiencing homelessness” outside on the subway grates suffering a drug overdose, or to bristle past another shouting out a schizophrenic rant.

Most of the stores inside have closed, including Starbucks, which cited safety concerns and a lack of customers as the reason for its shutdown. When you’re unlucky enough to have to catch a train to New York, you keep your head down, hold your bag tightly, and speed walk straight to your platform. No sane person dares stop in the bathroom.

No matter. Biden just talked about the threats to Democracy like Trump and the “MAGA Republicans” and he could have said that anywhere, and did in other places, D.C.’s Union Station was the perfect setting, albeit only for those with a sense of irony – although the massive tent encampment was finally cleared out before Biden’s speech.