A Million Stories

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by Jeffrey C. Billman, Victor Gamez and Holly Otterbein


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Published: Jun 1, 2010

Evan M. Lopez

To say that pedicabs — those human-powered taxis that New Yorkers and crunchy hippies heart — debuted in Philadelphia last weekend is like saying Stu Bykofsky employs sensible, intelligent, not-batshit-crazy metaphors.

It's a bit of an exaggeration. After all, pedicabs are banned from Market, South, Arch, Broad, Second, 11th, 12th, Oregon, Pattison, Frankford and dozens of other streets throughout the city. (What streets are even left? Juniper? Cedar? St. James?)

In fact, there's one entire neighborhood the green cabbies can't pedal through: Old City. Tom Dambman, co-owner of pedicab company Chariots of Philly, says Old City is "exactly the type of place" where he wants to see his three-wheeled taxis: The neighborhood is busy, full of tourists and could benefit from fewer cars. However, according to the bill City Council passed in November sanctioning pedicabs, the streets on which they're permitted is determined "upon consultation ... with the Councilmember for the district." In other words, if a councilperson isn't fond of pedicabs for whatever reason, or no reason at all, he or she can ban them in his or her district.

And Councilman Frank DiCicco — last seen trying to sue Twitter and Facebook over the flash mobs — doesn't want pedicabs this side of the Liberty Bell. This isn't the first time he's stood up against the big, bad pedicab, either: In 2006, he proposed legislation that would have banned them in Philadelphia altogether. However, that bill died after one hearing.

So what's DiCicco's problem? We're not sure. He didn't return A Million Stories' calls as of press time, though one of his aides says he "just wants to wait and see if they're safe or not, or cause congestion."

Right. And Stu Bykofsky is pro-bike.

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

The unemployed ... they're basically bums, right? Lazy, slack-jawed loafers who would rather bitch about stuff on the Internet than get a job, like good citizens do. Good citizens like U.S. Senator and former Phillies pitcher Jim Bunning, R-Ky., who back in February single-handedly blocked an extension of unemployment benefits in a fit of fiscal responsibility — though he did vote for the Bush tax cuts, of course — and then complained about having to miss a college basketball game to do it.

Evan M. Lopez

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

This pissed off unemployed Philadelphian Bruce Shore, who, under the clever pseudonym "Brad Shore from Louisville" — figuring the senator would ignore letters that came from a schmuck from Philly — fired off a slew of e-mails to the senator's website. Whether Bunning ever read them isn't clear. But, someone in the U.S. Attorney's Office clearly did — and they were not amused. As The Huffington Post first reported last week, on May 13, Shore got slapped with a grand jury indictment, alleging that, "in interstate communications, [Shore] did utilize a telecommunications device, that is a computer, whether or not communication ensued, without disclosing his identity and with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, and harass any person who received the communication, all in violation of 47 U.S.C. ï¿½ 223."

Because he sent his messages through the senator's website, Shore told HuffPo that he doesn't have saved copies of most of them, and doesn't know what prompted the indictment. (Indeed, the indictment implies that his use of a fake name and address may have done him in.) The e-mails that have been made public are, at least compared to your average philly.com commenter, pretty tame (and literate): "ARE you'all insane," read part of a Feb. 26 missive. "NO checks equal no food for me. DO YOU GET IT??"

Based on what she's seen in the press, ACLU of Pennsylvania staff attorney Mary Catherine-Roper, who is not connected to the case, doesn't see the crime: "If it's something short of a threat, they shouldn't be prosecuting this guy. The First Amendment allows you to criticize anybody, especially a government official. They get angry letters all the time."

We were unable to reach Shore by press time, so we'll just wish him luck on his upcoming journey to the Bluegrass State.

Also: Jim Bunning is a dick, even if he did pitch a perfect game against the Mets in '64.

Also: Fuck the Mets.

SCANDALS

It's only June, but already we may have a winner in the contest for dumbest pseudo-scandal of the year : the job offer the White House dangled in front of Joe Sestak last year to get him to drop his primary challenge to Arlen Specter . (Sestak, of course, declined, and went on to win.) Last week, Republicans everywhere were apoplectic over this supposed raping of Lady Liberty herself.

U.S. Rep Darrell Issa and all seven GOPers on the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded a special prosecutor. On May 26, Pat Toomey, Sestak's GOP opponent in the fall, went on MSNBC's Morning Joe to lament this " huge distraction" — all while hinting that, yes indeed, laws may have been broken, wink wink — while host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough amen'd. On Fox News, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity basically masturbated each other while fantasizing about the prospect of an Obama impeachment trial. (Yeah, we know: Gross.)

But since Sestak comes from our neck of the woods, we feel obliged to debunk this latest batch of right-wing dumbfuckery . First, though, a caveat: Sestak should have come clean from the get-go.

That said: Who cares? The official story, as told by the White House on Friday, is that former President Bill Clinton, at the behest of Rahm Emanuel, dangled the prospect of an unpaid executive branch advisory board spot if Sestak abandoned his Senate bid and kept his House seat. That's it. And yet, Issa still maintains, based on God knows what, that some illegality took place, and criticized the president for what he called " political shenanigans."

Please. Let's cut through the bullshit: There is no there there. Even if the White House offered Sestak a job to get him out of the race, as Jonathan Chait of The New Republic pointed out last week, there could not, by definition, be an illegal quid pro quo: "There's no such thing as offering somebody a job in return for them dropping out of a Senate race. The acceptance of a job means dropping out of a Senate race . The concept of offering somebody a job 'in exchange' for them declining to seek another job is like offering to marry a woman in exchange for her not marrying some other guy. It's conceptually nonsensical."

If this job offer were a crime, then it was also a crime when President Reagan's White House offered U.S. Sen. S.I. Hayakawa an ambassadorship to drop out of California's 1982 GOP Senate primary (in which Maureen Reagan, the president's daughter, was running). For whatever reason, we don't remember the Republicans trying to impeach St. Ronnie. Weird, that.

In fact, ethics groups, including Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — and anyone with half a brain, a group that apparently doesn't include the modern-day Republican cognoscenti — concluded a while ago that there's nothing even remotely criminal about what happened.

So, can we move on now?

This week's report by Jeffrey C. Billman, Victor Gamez and Holly Otterbein. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.