Pew's Idea of Accountability
I've spent the last few weeks wrestling with the Pew Charitable Trusts to get them to utter a single truthful sentence about their secret plan to rename 30th Street Station in honor of Benjamin Franklin, so I was stopped in my tracks yesterday by this quote in the Inquirer from the charity's new director of public policy, Jim O'Hara.
"All too often in policy discussions, the real problem is that you don't have solid, reliable data...But if you're going to have a policy discussion, let's have a rational, reasonable discussion that is driven by facts and data as opposed to having various sides yelling past each other."
Unfortunately for Philadelphia, it can't have a real discussion about the name change until Pew - the self-appointed arbiter of journalistic scruples - starts practicing what it so righteously preaches.
Read my most recent article about Mayor Street's decision to jump on the name-change express here.
"All too often in policy discussions, the real problem is that you don't have solid, reliable data...But if you're going to have a policy discussion, let's have a rational, reasonable discussion that is driven by facts and data as opposed to having various sides yelling past each other."
Unfortunately for Philadelphia, it can't have a real discussion about the name change until Pew - the self-appointed arbiter of journalistic scruples - starts practicing what it so righteously preaches.
Read my most recent article about Mayor Street's decision to jump on the name-change express here.
posted by Inga Saffron at 11:51 AM
1 Comments:
Changing the name of the station is a bad idea. 30th Street Station is historic, but more importantly the building and the name are a part of the civic fabric of this city.
A better idea would be to change the name of the airport. Giving the airport a name would bring it closer to the city than it currently is. Also naming the airport instead of the train station would have an international impact instead of just a regional one. We have several things in this city already named after Franklin, if we are going to do it again it should be to promote him and the city on a world class level. this could be accomplished with the airport. The train station, however, would be just another part of the city with his name on it. At least this way the world would take notice and he would be seen as a citizen of the city. You could liken it Da Vinci International in Rome, or De Gaul in Paris. Its just a better idea.
Post a Comment
<< Home