My apologies to my Daily News partners for plugging a blog written by their rivals at the Inquirer, but I just found this one and since it's about a subject near and dear to my heart, I just had to point it out.
Inquirer writer Melissa Dribben (with a little help from Ned Rauch-Mannino of the "Pick-up Philadelphia" campaign) has a blog that is essentially about the crazy amounts of litter on the ground in our fair city. It seems to consist mostly of citizen-written comments about the dirt in their part of the city or the "way things used to be" (everyone always remember it being so clean in the past, but I've seen Rocky and Philly in the 70s looked pretty dingy).
Anyway, I'm not one who believes that it's a core function of government to pick up litter, afterall no boroughs or townships pick up litter off the streets in suburban communities and those seem pretty clean. But the next mayor could make it a priority to make it easier for people to do it themselves or (and this I'm fine with) enforce the laws on the books and prosecute to the fullest extent. Start handing out a few $300 littering fines and we'll see how quickly people stop tossing their trash on the ground.