A Million Stories

All the news we care to print.

Evan M. Lopez

You know what? Sure, we may seem like a hedonistic little column that's way too obsessed with sex and drugs and screaming about civil liberties and making fun of stupid people. But truth be told, nothing wets our pants quite like a report quantifying previously unquantified phenomena. For instance, of course high school dropouts aren't as productive to society as graduates ... but naked numbers

In mid-January, the Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE) — a Washington-based think tank that focuses on high school dropouts, and how to make fewer of them — released its first report detailing the opportunities missed by Philly-region students not graduating from high school. The class that graduated in 2008 was 16,400 students short of what it should have been; halve the dropout rate, the report says, and the city will see amazing results: $125 million a year more in earnings; increased home sales of almost $300 million by the midpoint of the class's careers; $83 million in spending; 900 new jobs, and an increase in the gross regional product by nearly $160 million a year; and, not inconsequentially, some $18 million a year in new tax revenues, or about 20 percent of the $100 million budget deficit Michael Nutter and company are staring at this year.

Of course, all of that assumes that after those kids graduate, they stay in the area, and the school systems don't suck so badly that they split the second they even begin to think about procreating. Consider this: According to the AEE report, of the 196 high schools in the Philadelphia metro area — including 11 surrounding counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware — 41 are considered " dropout factories," meaning that fewer than 60 percent of any given freshman class will receive their diplomas. AEE communications director Jason Amos says that Philadelphia has all of the telltale signs of bad schools: Low reading levels? High poverty? New teachers for whom the city is a launching pad for less hellish careers in the suburbs? Check, check, check .

There's a silver lining, if you dig into Nutter's January " Shaping an Educated City" report, which, agenda-laden as it may be, portrays things as improving ever so slightly. For seven years in a row, the Philadelphia School District has seen its math and reading proficiency scores go up. Incidents of violence are down some 15 percent district-wide in the last two years. Oh, and there's this: In Nutter's first two years, graduation rates have improved by about 3 percentage points.

At this rate, Philadelphia should achieve the AEE's benchmark 50 percent reduction by 2025, by which point we'll all be lounging in bathtubs filled with hundred-dollar bills. Or maybe dead.

Guns don't kill people, Florida does

Philadelphia's got strict guns laws. Everyone knows this, including the people who all too often find ways of circumventing them. Like this so-called " Florida loophole," which the Daily News reported on Feb. 5: If the City of Brotherly Love denies you a concealed-weapon permit, just go ask Florida, where patriotic Second Amendment lovers will give you whatever you want, and because of reciprocity agreements Pennsylvania has with 24 other states, Florida included, Philadelphia has to honor it.

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Here, such permits are evaluated through a wide-ranging prism. If you have a string of priors or a bunch of unpaid parking tickets, chances are your application will be rejected, as the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) did more than 500 times last year . But in Florida, that state's Department of Agriculture(!) will only look to see if you have any convictions. Better still: You can get a Florida permit from the comfort of your own home, or the nearest gun show. In fact, some 10 percent of Florida's concealed-weapons permits go to nonresidents — 2,650 to Pennsylvanians alone, all of whom, of course, are law-abiding, church-going types who would never hurt a fly.

Meanwhile, City Council members Darrell Clarke and Donna Miller are still pushing their litany of gun control amendments to the Philadelphia Code — everything from having the police keep records of all ammunition sales in the city to denying weapons to people charged with crimes to prohibiting certain kinds of assault weapons from being registered. They first proposed these two years ago (!), and only now did they come before City Council for final approval. Except they didn't . At each of the last two Council meetings, Feb. 4 and Feb. 12, votes on the amendment were postponed.

So what's the problem? According to the Chief Clerk's Office, at least some of the amendments may run afoul of state law. (Calls to Clarke and Miller's offices were not returned by press time.) And, indeed, 18 Pa. C.S. � 6111.4 and 18 Pa. C.S. � 6120 seem to make it illegal for municipalities to keep any registry of guns or regulate the "lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of ... ammunition or ammunition components when carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws of this Commonwealth."

So, there you go: Harrisburg has apparently determined that letting cops track bullet sales in Philly interferes with some redneck's God-given right to shoot Bambi . This makes perfect sense.

Your government at work

Attention, passengers: Traveling with Arabic-language learning materials may impair your ability to pass through American airports. That, at least, was the message received by Nicholas George of Wyncote, Pa., when he tried to fly back to Pomona College in California in August 2009. After security officials found Arabic-English flash cards in his carry-on, George was detained at Philadelphia International Airport for nearly five hours and interrogated by agents from the Transportation Security Administration, the PPD and the FBI.On Feb. 10, the ACLU filed suit against all three agencies in federal court.

George says he was interrogated about everything from who "did" 9/11 to whether he was involved in any " Islamic" or " communist" groups at college. He was never told why he was being detained. When an FBI agent asked him if knew why, and George said no, the agent called him " a fucking idiot ."

"It's their whole mentality that's really dangerous," George tells A Million Stories. "The mentality that they can do whatever they want, that they're not bound by the rules. ... I want to make it clear that it's not OK for that to happen when you go to an airport. That shouldn't be the way it is."

"This is not about money, this is about accountability and training," says Mary Catherine Roper, staff attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania . Passengers are questioned by the TSA for carrying Arabic-language materials all the time, Roper says. Last year, the ACLU won a $240,000 judgment for a man who was detained for wearing a T-shirt with Arabic lettering.

The TSA, Philadelphia police and FBI all declined to comment because the suit was still pending. And probably because they're embarrassed.

This week's report by Christine Adkins, Jeffrey C. Billman, Julia Harte and Andrew Thompson.