A Million Stories

All the news we care to print.

by Jeffrey C. Billman, Victor Gamez and Holly Otterbein

Evan M. Lopez

So, let's say that you're a conservative political movement — after years of record-breaking deficit spending under a conservative president and Congress — formed shortly after the inauguration of the country's first black president to, um, fight deficit spending, and things have been real tough lately. Somehow, everyone's been getting the idea that you're racist.

Preposterous, right? Well, sure, there are all those racist-ish signs that keep popping up at your rallies. And yeah, there was that time some of your members reportedly yelled the N-word at a black congressman during the health care fracas. And the response of one of your highest-profile leaders, Mark Williams, to the NAACP's request that you weed out racist elements — writing a "satirical" letter to Abraham Lincoln that reads, "We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!" — probably didn't help, either.

This racism charge has become fairly pernicious, and you need to counter it before it gets out of control. There's only one thing to do: Pack the shiniest "I'm with Arizona" buttons you have (for sale, of course) and bring them to last Saturday's "Uni-Tea" (get it?) rally in Independence Park, where — and this is very important — your organizers have rounded up every single non-white right-winger they could find and put them on stage, in front of God and everyone, to prove, once and for all, that the Tea Party and racism are not synonymous.

After all, some of your best friends are black.

Of the 13 speakers at Uni-Tea, co-hosted by the local Independence Hall Tea Party Association and explicitly designed to highlight the Tea Party's diversity, eight were black and one was Hispanic. Everyone talked about how the only colors that matter are red, white and blue, and how liberals who peddle social-welfare and affirmative-action policies are the true bigots, and they should really give us our country back.

Uni-Tea was about more than just speakers, though: You may not know this, but Tea Partiers (note: This is the preferred term, as " tea baggers" has an unwelcomed sexual connotation, as in, the dipping of a man's testicles into his partner's mouth) love hip-hop. Indeed, if you haven't seen a group of slightly older, overweight Tea Partiers rise out of their folding chairs with their hands up as conservative white-boy rap duo Hi-Caliber busts such rhymes as "no taxation without representation" or "U.S.A., everybody get ready, T-E-A is sweeping the nation," well, you haven't really lived, have you?

In attendance were roughly 500 real Americans — organizers predicted at least three times that number — many carrying Gadsden flags or brandishing such delightful cardboard phrases as " Socialism Kills" and "Talk Radio is TRUTH."

Of these, about 25 were non-Caucasian. But really, who's counting? Color is an anachronism here. They say so themselves.

(Of course, they did invite Andrew Breitbart — the race-baiting blogger who took after black Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod on manufactured reversae-racism charges a few weeks ago — to be a keynote speaker.)

Also: Did you know that Tea Partiers are so friggin' colorblind that not only do they not see black and brown, but purple and pink, too? That's right: They love the gays — so long, that is, as the gays pass on equal rights. For instance, locals Brendan Kissam and Matt Hissey got lots of attention carrying "Proud Gay Conservative" signs. They feel not antagonized at all by the Tea Party's conservative leanings.

And why would they? They both oppose gay marriage; they don't feel they need it.

"I don't know what rights I don't have now as a gay citizen," Kissam tells us.

Not to pick nits or anything, but what about the 1,138 benefits, rights and privileges granted to straight couples that, because of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, gays and lesbians can't claim? Things like Social Security and Medicare benefits? Or, you know, tax-free inheritance? Just saying.

Safety first

As if the widespread mouth-breathing, creaky carnival-ride noises, out-of-nowhere stops and occasional blackouts weren't enough to work your cortisol levels into a frenzy every time you so much as tweet about a SEPTA train, here's another reason to pop a Valium before taking the El: Alstom Signaling Inc., the company that made the faulty track circuit blamed for a collision last year on Washington, D.C.'s Metro line, which killed nine people and injured dozens more, also sells track circuits to SEPTA.

Comforting, huh? Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that all of the transit systems using Alstom's equipment — Metro, SEPTA, Chicago Transit Authority and many more — work with the company "to establish periodic inspection and maintenance procedures to examine all GRS audio frequency track circuit modules to identify and remove from service" any that exhibited the same problems as D.C.'s.

"We've always done that," responds Richard Maloney, SEPTA's director of public affairs. Maloney also says that Washington, D.C.'s track circuits were 30 years old, and ours are, um, only 10 years old. The defect that led to the Metro accident — a track-circuit signal jumped from a transmitter to a receiver, causing one train to not detect the stopped train it crashed into — is unique to the 30-year-old model, he adds: "That problem is not possible in our model."

But didn't Metro probably think the same thing before last year's crash?

"We've done tests ... and ours just can't do that."

Doesn't that make you feel as secure as a millionaire's newborn?

About goddamn time

If you're like us — and we wouldn't wish that upon our worst enemy — you've spent the last few weeks in tingling anticipation of the months-late, $80,000, city-commissioned Boston College study on the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP), which City Paper contributor Ralph Cipriano eviscerated in his recent investigation [Cover Story, "The Billion Dollar Boondoggle," April 22].

Well, holy fucking shit: It's here! And what's more, now that an official document has stated the obvious — that DROP is an epic money-suck, costing us at least $258 million over the last decade; that's considerably less than the $1 billion-plus impact actuary Joe Boyle calculated the program had on Philly taxpayers for our investigation, but hey, it's something — Mayor Michael Nutter has channeled his inner populist and demanded that City Council eliminate the program once and for all.

Hot damn. But before we take a victory lap — and really, without Cipriano's dogged pursuit of this story, would DROP be on anybody's radar? Unlikely — let's pause to remember that six City Council members, including Council President Anna Verna, are enrolled in the program, and set to cash in six-figure DROP bonuses in 2011 or 2012. And even though any legislation that makes it through Council won't affect them, we somehow doubt Verna and Co. will effectively pronounce themselves the world's biggest hypocrites by denying the same right to thousands of other city workers. In other words, this thing isn't done yet.

As always, we'll keep you posted.

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