Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Bob Brady

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center recently released a report which notes Mitt Romney would have to raise taxes on millions of middle-class families with children by more than $2,000 to pay for his $5 trillion tax plan, which benefits the wealthiest Americans and waits for said wealth to trickle down, eventually probably sort of. And with that in mind, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady took the role of surrogate on an Obama Camp conference call yesterday, ripping the Republican presidential candidate for proposing a plan that he says would halt the recovery. “Romney’s tax plan would skew benefits to the wealthy,” he said. “He’d give millionaires like himself a budget-busting 25-percent tax cut while raising taxes on at least 18 million hardworking families. Romney claims he would pay for his $5 trillion tax plan by curbing or eliminating tax deductions, but he hasn’t named which specific deductions he would eliminate.”

A man has been sentenced to 15-30 years for human trafficking based out of Northeast Philadelphia.

A new list which compares the best cities for “aging,” using statistics like health care, crime rates, jobs, housing and transportation puts Philadelphia at the 16th best in the country. Can’t wait to start aging.

Jorge Santana, a deputy city commissioner, testified at a Commonwealth Court hearing on Voter ID yesterday and predicted a “mess” at the polls in November.

Today are the closing arguments in said Voter ID case. The decision may come the week of August 13. The whole world is watching.

A man was arrested with a dismantled AK-47, a stock, a bayonet, a 40-round clip, a .38-caliber handgun, about 25 Percocet pills, a bag of marijuana and $700 in cash on the Broad Street Line yesterday. 28-year-old Jermal Michael Ponds of Fern Rock was noticed on the subway at the Fairmount Station with an AK-47 sticking out of his bag when a woman then alerted authorities at City Hall and they took him in. Dude was going somewhere.

The Boston Consulting Group now says the Philadelphia School District needs to close between 29 and 57 schools in the next five years. The firm also recommended the district consider privatizing its facilities (even though officials reached an agreement with the union representing facilities employees). The district’s chief recovery officer, Thomas Knudsen says the consulting group does not prescribe what they’re doing. They just provide information.

About 100 people participated in the Racial Beer Summit last night at Reading Terminal Market, at which they gathered around with a beer and talked race. The featured speaker was Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill who noted he did not want to live in a post-racial society, but rather a “post-racist society.”