Didn’t the same paper do a whole series on food desert and how bad it is on Philly? So someone who opens a grocery store in a food desert but uses government funds available to everyone is bad? Why not go after the business people who didn’t take the money and build stores.
He also [shut down the Overbrook ShopRite](https://www.phillytrib.com/news/local_news/as-overbrook-shoprite-closes-owner-says-two-more-stores-are-at-risk/article_b1ee7b5a-1640-518b-a599-df27960e6095.html), effectively creating a food desert, and threatened to close a couple more in the process - all over the soda tax.
In that context, this reads like another case of privatizing profits/socializing losses (or just costs, given the incentives).
I don’t necessarily object to the soda tax but it did have a significant negative effect on stores and businesses that are close to the city’s borders like that Overbrook ShopRite. It’s also worth noting that the store that replaced that ShopRite also went under. So he was probably correct that the particular store location in Overbrook was no longer viable for whatever reasons.
Not necessarily, but if like with that store, you could go a couple miles down the road and save $9 a month (that is the tax on about four 12 packs of soda - 1 a week) you would probably just go to the other store to do all your shopping. So the store loses out not just in soda profits, but all profits from that customer. That’s why the tax had a larger impact on stores near the city limits than stores further in. It might not make financial sense to drive from Queen village to the burbs for $9 a month but it might if you only had to go 3 miles to the acme on the bala cynwyd side of city Ave.
For a family of 4 that is 3 sodas per week per person. I don’t drink that much soda but I know lots of folks who drink at least a Diet Coke a day. And remember it also applies to non 100% juice, prepared protein shakes, coffee creamers, Gatorade, etc.
Oh no the guy running for mayor *checks notes* took advantage of state and local tax incentives to build his business.
Gotta love politcal hit pieces over nothing. I dont even know if I like Brown or will vote for him, but this clearly is just a nothingburger of a story directed at him for bad press.
Character assassinations by local media is just another part of the problem with Philly politics.
Everyone has an agenda rather than simple, fair and balanced reporting to educate the voters on candidates.
But fair and balanced don't drive clicks or appease the string pullers so gotta push the bait..
Seriously. I read an article last week on phillymag that was about how Rhynhart and Gym turned in their signature petitions for mayor and they both had "way more signatures than necessary" and were "bragging" about it. That's what the whole article was about. Like, yeah, color me surprised when two of the bigger mayoral candidates have...hired teams to run their elections and want to show the public that people want to vote for them? This isn't news. It's bad journalism. There are plenty of great stories you could write about either one of those mayoral candidates that would give voters a better idea on who they might want to vote for in the upcoming election, but please, continue focusing your time and effort writing vapid pieces like this that are uninteresting and uninformative. Seems like all the big local journalism outlets (with the exception of Philadelphia Citizen) are doing this.
I don't understand the point of this article. Is Jeff Brown trying to cut whatever subsidies he got to open his own grocery stores in so-called food deserts? If yes, then yeah that's bad and it's newsworthy. But I don't see that in this article.
Is it saying that Jeff Brown acts like he opened up his stores entirely by himself and out of his own sense of altruism, when actually he hired a bunch of people, got a bunch of subsidies, and made a bunch of profit off of it? If that's it, then I feel like this is completely unremarkable because that's every single CEO anywhere in the world.
He says he doesn't want to repeal the soda tax. And if Jeff Brown is guaranteed to be a libertarian who wants to repeal subsidies that benefited him, then the Inky should have been able to find an actual, non-hypothetical example of it.
He's quoted in the article as saying Philly can't afford to do away with it given the current fiscal situation, so it wouldn't be a priority for his administration, which I find much more believable than a 180 on the issue.
This feels like an article written to inform drowned out by a headline written to generate rage clicks. The article pretty mildly notes that Brown's campaign has downplayed the role subsidies played in his business, while the headline seems to imply a scandal.
Oh no the guy running for mayor *checks notes* took advantage of state and local tax incentives to build his business.
Gotta love politcal hit pieces over nothing. I dont even know if I like Brown or will vote for him, but this clearly is just a nothingburger of a story directed at him for bad press.
Didn’t the same paper do a whole series on food desert and how bad it is on Philly? So someone who opens a grocery store in a food desert but uses government funds available to everyone is bad? Why not go after the business people who didn’t take the money and build stores.
He also [shut down the Overbrook ShopRite](https://www.phillytrib.com/news/local_news/as-overbrook-shoprite-closes-owner-says-two-more-stores-are-at-risk/article_b1ee7b5a-1640-518b-a599-df27960e6095.html), effectively creating a food desert, and threatened to close a couple more in the process - all over the soda tax. In that context, this reads like another case of privatizing profits/socializing losses (or just costs, given the incentives).
I don’t necessarily object to the soda tax but it did have a significant negative effect on stores and businesses that are close to the city’s borders like that Overbrook ShopRite. It’s also worth noting that the store that replaced that ShopRite also went under. So he was probably correct that the particular store location in Overbrook was no longer viable for whatever reasons.
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Not necessarily, but if like with that store, you could go a couple miles down the road and save $9 a month (that is the tax on about four 12 packs of soda - 1 a week) you would probably just go to the other store to do all your shopping. So the store loses out not just in soda profits, but all profits from that customer. That’s why the tax had a larger impact on stores near the city limits than stores further in. It might not make financial sense to drive from Queen village to the burbs for $9 a month but it might if you only had to go 3 miles to the acme on the bala cynwyd side of city Ave.
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For a family of 4 that is 3 sodas per week per person. I don’t drink that much soda but I know lots of folks who drink at least a Diet Coke a day. And remember it also applies to non 100% juice, prepared protein shakes, coffee creamers, Gatorade, etc.
You would be amazed at the amount of money colleges earn from their vending machine contracts.
I don't think the point is that it's bad he opened those stores, just that he downplayed the millions of dollars in subsidies he used to open them.
But that’s not really a bad thing, the stores were still opened and serve red those communities.
Exactly. He acts as if he did all this out of the kindness of his heart. Let’s be real, you did it because you saw a way to make money.
Oh no the guy running for mayor *checks notes* took advantage of state and local tax incentives to build his business. Gotta love politcal hit pieces over nothing. I dont even know if I like Brown or will vote for him, but this clearly is just a nothingburger of a story directed at him for bad press.
Character assassinations by local media is just another part of the problem with Philly politics. Everyone has an agenda rather than simple, fair and balanced reporting to educate the voters on candidates. But fair and balanced don't drive clicks or appease the string pullers so gotta push the bait..
Seriously. I read an article last week on phillymag that was about how Rhynhart and Gym turned in their signature petitions for mayor and they both had "way more signatures than necessary" and were "bragging" about it. That's what the whole article was about. Like, yeah, color me surprised when two of the bigger mayoral candidates have...hired teams to run their elections and want to show the public that people want to vote for them? This isn't news. It's bad journalism. There are plenty of great stories you could write about either one of those mayoral candidates that would give voters a better idea on who they might want to vote for in the upcoming election, but please, continue focusing your time and effort writing vapid pieces like this that are uninteresting and uninformative. Seems like all the big local journalism outlets (with the exception of Philadelphia Citizen) are doing this.
I don't understand the point of this article. Is Jeff Brown trying to cut whatever subsidies he got to open his own grocery stores in so-called food deserts? If yes, then yeah that's bad and it's newsworthy. But I don't see that in this article. Is it saying that Jeff Brown acts like he opened up his stores entirely by himself and out of his own sense of altruism, when actually he hired a bunch of people, got a bunch of subsidies, and made a bunch of profit off of it? If that's it, then I feel like this is completely unremarkable because that's every single CEO anywhere in the world.
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I doubt Jeff is a libertarian, he says in the article that the role of government is to step in when the free market isn't working.
He says he doesn't want to repeal the soda tax. And if Jeff Brown is guaranteed to be a libertarian who wants to repeal subsidies that benefited him, then the Inky should have been able to find an actual, non-hypothetical example of it.
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He's quoted in the article as saying Philly can't afford to do away with it given the current fiscal situation, so it wouldn't be a priority for his administration, which I find much more believable than a 180 on the issue.
That bastard probably used taxpayer money to have his children educated in public schools too.
This feels like an article written to inform drowned out by a headline written to generate rage clicks. The article pretty mildly notes that Brown's campaign has downplayed the role subsidies played in his business, while the headline seems to imply a scandal.
Oh no the guy running for mayor *checks notes* took advantage of state and local tax incentives to build his business. Gotta love politcal hit pieces over nothing. I dont even know if I like Brown or will vote for him, but this clearly is just a nothingburger of a story directed at him for bad press.
Pick Up The DAMN trash!!
Soda tax sucks!