C4 | THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER | SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 2015

B | PHILLY.COM

Inquirer.com/opinion
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Stan Wischnowski VICE PRESIDENT, NEWS OPERATIONS
William K. Marimow EDITOR

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Sandra M. Clark MANAGING EDITOR / FEATURES, OPERATIONS, AND DIGITAL

Gabriel Escobar MANAGING EDITOR / NEWS AND DIGITAL
Tom McNamara DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR / SUNDAY AND SPORTS
Harold Jackson EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
Acel Moore ASSOCIATE EDITOR EMERITUS

Math lesson

f the contest for mayor

were between a candidate who supports
schools and one who
doesnt, it wouldnt be
much of a campaign. Declaring education important and
vowing to fund it accordingly is easy. How to pay for it
is the hard question one
the mayoral candidates, as
their answers on todays oped page show, arent especially eager to answer.

| EDITORIAL

A quiz on school funding

tests the mayoral
candidates.

Like most core government services, public education has to be funded on a

recurring basis. That means
one-time windfalls like Jim
Kenneys tax-lien sale and
several candidates welcome
promises to collect back taxes wont get the School District that far.
Other than savaging Mayor Nutters proposed 9 percent property tax hike, the
candidates are short on concrete plans for the broadbased taxes that could significantly boost long-term
school funding. Nelson Diazs detailed proposals come
closest, supporting a restructuring that raises taxes on
commercial property while
reducing wage and business

levies. (Lynne Abraham supports tax reform more

vaguely). The city needs
such reforms, but as a
school funding solution,
they have the disadvantage
of requiring state constitutional changes and at least
years of political warfare.
The only substantive alternative to raising revenues is
reducing spending on other
services, an option often given short shrift in Philadelphia. Anthony Williams
promise to dedicate more of
the citys property tax income to schools suggests
major cuts to other services.
To some extent, so do Kenneys zero-based budgeting, which promises to scrutinize all city spending, and
Republican candidate Melissa Murray Baileys sensible
reenvisioning of school
spending as the top line of
the city budget. Unfortunately, none of the candidates
specifies one iota of the services that would be eliminated as a result.
As to the miscellany,
soaking the citys flushest
nonprofits or choking off
tax abatements, among other crowd-pleasers, might
yield incremental rewards.
But if paying for high-quality urban education were
that easy, we would already
be doing it. On this vexing
issue, the most agreeable
answers are also the most
suspect.

In with the new

W
hile the citys legislators have to
work together,
Philadelphia City Council
is overpopulated by members who reflexively follow
Council President Darrell
Clarke. Emblematic of this
was Councils refusal to
hold a public hearing on a
$1.87 billion offer for the
Philadelphia Gas Works.
Council needs an upheaval to return it to its mission of representing the
public. Fortunately, the
crowd of candidates seeking five Democratic atlarge Council seats includes political newcomers with impressive civic
experience and potential.

| EDITORIAL

The most promising

Democratic City Council
candidates are newcomers.
Though Helen Gym is
best known as a fierce advocate for Philadelphias
public schools, she has
been an effective activist
on a range of issues. Gym,
47, of Logan Square, cofounded the Public School
Notebook, which informs
and mobilizes parents, and
its companion advocacy
group, Parents United for
Public Education. She is
appropriately impatient
with the status quo and,
provided she maintains
some daylight between herself and her union supporters, capable of being an independent Council member in the tradition of David Cohen, Michael Nutter,
and John Street.
Trained as an economist,
Paul Steinke, 51, of West
Philadelphia, would bring
an analytical background
to Council that could inform legislation on budgets, taxes, and development. Steinke has served
as executive director of
the University City District, finance director of
the Center City District,
and manager of the Reading Terminal Market, experience pertinent to a leading role in an evolving Philadelphia. An advocate of
shifting the tax burden
away from business and
wage taxes and toward
real estate, Steinke understands the effect of government policies on growth
and communities.
Tom Wyatt, 43, told the

Editorial
Board
he
wouldnt be a representative of City Council, but a
representative in City
Council. A partner at Dilworth Paxson who once
taught school in Mississippi, he has been a civic activist in his neighborhood,
Passyunk Square. His experience as an executive at
American Water Works offers needed insight on utilities in light of Councils notorious PGW flub.
Isaiah Thomas, 30, of
East Oak Lane, a charter
school dean and basketball
coach, returns undaunted
from an unsuccessful
Council run four years
ago. He is a thoughtful and
energetic proponent of
community causes such as
making neighborhoods safer and addressing abusive
police tactics.
Four-term Councilman W.
Wilson Goode Jr., 49, of
West Philadelphia, rises
above his fellow incumbents
thanks to his steady advocacy for low-income Philadelphians. Last year, voters approved a measure he initiated requiring city subcontractors to pay a living wage.
This year, Council passed
his bill to give tax credits to
companies that create jobs
in the city. He has also
called for payments in lieu
of taxes from large nonprofits and argued forcefully for
a reconsideration of tax
abatements.
The three other incumbents seeking reelection
havent earned it. Despite
her efforts to make amends,
Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Browns misuse of
campaign funds, which
brought a record ethics fine,
overshadows her legislative
achievements. Councilman
William Greenlee has been
an advocate of progressive
causes but seems too comfortable with the worst habits of Council and the Democratic machine. And Councilman Ed Neilson has served
without distinction since his
electricians union backers
eased him into a Council
seat in a special election last
year.
The city would be better
served by the most promising newcomers in this
field. The Inquirer endorses HELEN GYM, PAUL
STEINKE, TOM WYATT,
ISAIAH THOMAS, and W.
WILSON GOODE Jr. for
City Councils Democratic
at-large seats.

COMMENTARY

Great journalist and mentor

Don Kimelman

putting a premium on fun.

I worked closely with David in the
is a former deputy editor
next, more trying phase of his caof The Inquirers editorial page
reer, when he was editor of The Ine were driving home quirers editorial page. David sucfrom a glorious day ceeded the estimable Ed Guthman,
at Los Angeles Getty a former aide to Bobby Kennedy
Museum last month who ran an operation that was conwhen David Boldt, sistently liberal and, as a result, too
from the backseat, commanded his often predictable.
Davids mandate was to enliven
wife, Kelly, to insert what had become his new theme song into the the page, and part of that enlivening
CD player. It was Tim McGraws came at the cost of staff harmony.
2004 single Live Like You Were Dy- Ideologically, David occupied a rather unusual place on the
ing, inspired by his faspectrum. He was what
ther Tug McGraws defiant
could be called an urban
response to a fatal cancer
conservative, committed
diagnosis.
to Philadelphias future
David had received his
and to combating the inown death sentence from
tractable poverty at the
pancreatic cancer a few
heart of the citys probweeks earlier and was allems. But he believed that
ready in steep decline. Unthe traditional liberal solulike the hero of McGraws
tions had failed and that
song, he wasnt planning to
new approaches were badgo skydiving, bull riding,
ly needed.
or mountain climbing. But
So he favored welfare rehe was determined to live
form before Bill Clinton
his final days with as much David Boldt
and a Republican Congress
gusto as he could summon
made it happen. And he was a pasand with no self-pity or regrets.
For those who had known David sionate advocate of school choice as
over his long career as an editor and that movement was just getting unwriter at The Inquirer, that approach derway supporting not just charto death was very much in character. ters, which have since become mainIndeed, one of my first memories of stream, but private- and parochialDavid was when he showed up unex- school vouchers, which have repectedly for a low-key Inquirer soft- mained on the political fringe.
David would have been the first
ball game in 1979 overweight, out
of shape, and nearly a decade older to admit that his politics were drivthan most of the other players and en not just by deeply held philosostunned us all by stretching out a phy, but by a more mischievous consingle with a mad scramble and head- trarian streak. He loved to annoy
liberals, whom he memorably defirst slide into second base.
That gung-ho spirit carried over to scribed in one column as the kind
his journalism. The obituaries after of pusillanimous people who would
his death last week have rightly fo- get out of the shower to pee.
But he also aroused the ire of the
cused on Davids leadership of The
Inquirers Sunday magazine in the leadership of the Philadelphia and
1970s and 80s a corner of the Camden Catholic dioceses with a
news operation that produced memo- 1990 defense of a Tony Auth carrable and important journalism while toon that had blasted the church for

pressuring Catholic politicians to

conform to the churchs views on
abortion. In a throwaway line he
would live to regret, David noted to
readers that the hierarchical, Romebased church was quite literally an
un-American institution.
Matters came to a head over an editorial that I wrote and David put in
the paper that tentatively raised
the possibility of offering incentives to
women on welfare to use a newly approved, long-acting contraceptive
called Norplant to reduce the number
of children born into circumstances
that tend to perpetuate poverty.
The editorial provoked strong
public reactions pro and con, but
near-universal criticism from the
newsroom and, more important,
much of the rest of the Editorial
Board staff. We ended up running
an apology, and David took greater
care in the following years to be
more inclusive in determining the
voice of The Inquirer, while reserving his unvarnished opinions for his
Sunday bylined column.
Those controversies that caused
blood to boil a quarter-century ago
did not intrude on Davids final
weeks. Rather, he was swamped
with unsolicited testimonials from
journalists whose careers he had influenced and from high school students he had prepared for college
in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where David
and Kelly lived the last 14 years.
There was a common theme to
these paeans. Whether they had interacted with David in a newsroom or
classroom, the writers thanked him
profusely for being a warm, wise, and
deeply caring mentor and for having changed their lives for the better.
And that mentoring continued right
to the end, as David, like the man in
the song, showed me and many others how to face death with insouciance and a large measure of courage.
+donkimelman@gmail.com

Science icon who struggled with fame

Paul Halpern

is a University of the Sciences physics

professor and the author of Einsteins
Dice and Schrdingers Cat: How Two
Great Minds Battled Quantum
Randomness to Create a Unified
Theory of Physics

his weekend marks the 60th

anniversary of Albert Einsteins death. The scientific
community is also celebrating this
year the centennial of his masterly
general theory of relativity, which
described gravity more comprehensively than did Sir Isaac Newton
and set off a revolution in our understanding of the universe.
Though many decades have passed,
Einstein has remained an iconic figure the very emblem of genius. His
probing eyes, creased face, mop of
unruly hair, and warm smile, as seen
particularly in photos from his later
years, express the inviting side of science. Even those who find physics
enigmatic and unapproachable take
comfort in the friendliness and familiarity his memory conveys.
In Einsteins lifetime, however, public treatment of him was decidedly
mixed. While for some he was a
prophet to be revered, to others he
was a radical enemy of the state. Ironically, the suspicion with which his
pacifist beliefs were viewed carried
over from Germany, where antiSemitic student protesters hounded
him throughout the 1920s, to the United States, where a right-wing group
known as the Woman Patriot Corporation called for his deportation.
While Einstein was fortunate to
have left Germany before the start
of the Nazi regime, he witnessed

from abroad the assassination of his

character and threats against his life
and property. But over here, he met
with a different kind of intimidation.
Recently released FBI files show
how, during the McCarthy era, the
agency monitored his activities and
addressed a stream of correspondence questioning his patriotism. Although clearly his fate under the Nazis would have been horrendously
worse, he couldnt truly feel secure
on either side of the Atlantic.
One of the most prominent threats
against Einstein an attempted assassination took place little more
than 90 years ago. On Jan. 31, 1925,
Marie Dickson, a deranged Russian
widow, forced her way into his Berlin
apartment brandishing a weapon (according to some reports, a revolver;
in others, a hat pin). Previously, in
Paris, she had threatened Soviet envoy Leonid Krassin and been jailed
for three weeks before hunting down
Einstein. Luckily, Elsa Einstein found
a ruse to protect her husband, upstairs in his study, while she called
the police and had Dickson arrested
again. She was sent to an asylum.
At times, Einstein felt besieged
even by those purporting to be sympathetic. Like many celebrities, he
had to flee from paparazzi. While he
had great interest in conveying his
ideas, such as his repeated attempts
to unify the laws of nature, he
stressed that his personal matters
should be off limits. When he turned
50, for example, he publicly released
a new theory of everything and privately retreated to an estate in the
Berlin suburbs to celebrate with his
family. Nevertheless, a reporter
tracked him down and offered the

public a complete rundown of his

birthday party. What could he do?
Not even Einsteins hospital stays
were off limits. In 1949, he needed
abdominal surgery and was operated on at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital.
After the operation, he tried to leave
the facility quietly via its back exit.
Newspaper photographers found
out, surrounded him, and tried to
take his picture. He begged for them
to leave him alone and ended up
having to get a police escort.
Before Einstein died in 1955, he
stressed that he wanted no memorial and asked that his body be cremated. Even in death, however, his expressed wishes for anonymity were
violated when physician Thomas
Harvey removed his brain for study.
Slices of his brain have been on exhibit at various museums, including
the Mtter Museum in Philadelphia.
Einsteins desire simply to be left
alone remained unfulfilled.
Einsteins prominence served
him well in getting his ideas across
and in mustering support for the
social causes he advocated. Yet due
to his fame, he was forced to wage
an unceasing battle for the right to
a private life. His struggle raises
many questions about the rights of
celebrities, politicians, and other
public figures to carve out corners
for themselves where they are out
of view of the camera.
An iconic photo of Einstein shows
him sticking out his tongue, purportedly to ruin the shot. With humor,
he illuminated the fight for privacy
that he grappled with for much of
his adult life.
+p.halper@usciences.edu