Drill, but not on the left coast ...

I haven't looked at even the opinion pieces on Obama's new policy for drilling for oil everywhere on the right coast, so I can't even express misinterpreted facts... Oh yeah, of course I can, since when did being uninformed ever stop an American.

And actually I have looked just a bit of some opinion pieces (well, one piece), and l looked at the blurb on another. "Obama announces a new policy with sensible limits" or a quote to that effect. So it is sensible to ruin the view from the Outer Banks, but not Big Sur? Well, if the South is making noises about going to the Republicans, while California, Oregon and Washington seem more kindly disposed towards Democrats remain untouched ...

What struck me was someone talking about how Obama can't seem to get anywhere on new energy (solar and wind?) or climate change in Congress. So he mentioned nuclear and clean coal in the State of the Union, and now has this nugget/crumb to toss to Republicans; the whole right coast opened up for drilling.

Obama has gone here before. The stimulus went to Congress with a lot of tax cuts in it already, and though the Republicans stonewalled in the House, in the Senate because of either Harry Reid or Obama or both, the Republicans were given the opportunity to step up. Three (the two from Maine and Arlen) did, and reportedly got everything they asked for (true? false? who knows?). Obama was supposedly interested in making health care reform a bipartisan effort form the start, and still made overtures in September to the Republicans on HCR (after a bruising summer), offering to give them a prize in Obama caving on tort reform. But as we know the Republicans had turned into the party of nope, using (seriously) distortions to play on the fears of some in the public about HCR.

Now Obama (who is more and more clearly a pragmatic moderate) is hoping that yet another gift to Republicans of a pre-concession will spur them to compromise on carbon taxes or switching subsidies from coal and oil to solar and wind. I suspect the Republicans are thinking "suckerrrr".

I should post something ...

I should post something, to keep y'all interested.

Really, I got nothing.

A horse, a rabbi and Robert Zimmerman (tm) walk into a bar. The Bartender looks up and says "What is this, some sort of a joke?" Buh-duhp bah (rimshot noise ... no, not that).

I did want to say something about the Vatican's continuing problems. Did the pope really equate accusations that he ignored child abuse to "petty gossip"? Really? I mean, that is probably worse than the George W Bush school of how to navigate politics.

Primaries coming up. Listen, any economist should tell you, if he or she is being honest, that your vote counts for nothing. But voting is like behaving morally after realizing you can't really dismiss the existentialists logically. You gotta do it, so vote for the people who would surprise you when they screwed you over (the Sestaks, the Hoeffels, Obama ...and I am probably misspelling all these guys names). Specter is probably a lock, and maybe Onorato, but these other guys would be better in office. So make a statement, charge that windmill, Don Q.

Did I just read that Obama opened up coastline for oil drilling? Say whut?

Kelly moderates his hyperbole, somewhat ...

As I have often done, I am taking a look at today's column from one particular conservative columnist, Jack Kelly at the mostly otherwise moderate/liberal Post-Gazette. Kelly still has his snarky tone, comparing the terms "new deal", "fair deal" (a Truman term) and "big f-ing deal" (which Kelly accurately attributes to Biden). But he sort of redeems of his past excesses with this phrase in his fourth paragraph "Obamacare, on the other hand, is detested by many if not most Americans". Not a majority? Not all? It must have nearly killed Kelly to admit that the polls don't absolutely show a majority of Americans opposed to health care reform.

On the other hand, if they are being honest, liberals should get used to phrases like "slim majority" or even "slim plurality" in conjunction with all things Obama. Actually it is a testament to the continuing weariness of that huge mass of working Americans that they (we) have had much more trouble getting ahead, not to say just keeping up. The actual health care bill is a sort of a poor copy of what apparently the Swiss have. And by the way, the Swiss are second only to us in terms of per capita on health care. Therefore, I suspect that as this bill is implemented, US spending per capita will drop, but will settle at a level still higher than every other industrial country (if not ever country period). Americans do have reason to be suspicious.

Unfortunately Jack Kelly is a poor spokesman for the other side. Instead of focusing on shortcomings in terms of what it is supposed to do, Kelly focused on how the cost will bankrupt the country, and that is might be unconstitutional. Even if the HCR bill does some of what it is supposed to do, it will pay for itself pretty well, and unless the Supreme Court thinks it is a good idea during a Democrat administration to re-write the constitution (they were willing to do that in 2000, but that resulted in a Republican administration).

Here's hoping there will be an on point debate that starts sometime soon. I'm hoping but I'm not optimistic.

My Earth Hour moment ...

So tonight Earth Hour took place, from 8:30 to 9:30 (for the uninitiated, that is turning off the lights for an hour). I had seen commercials, and Bill Peduto (tm) had tweeted about it (OK, Bill Peduto is not trademarked; I wouldn't have made the joke but I seriously doubt he reads my blog). At first I thought it was at 8:00, but then I found it out it was supposed to start at 8:30 (OK, that was really apropos of nothing).

So I did taxes today, the Saturday 10 to 4 shift that went to 4:30 (I should have stayed longer, been a mensch, but I might have ended up being the last one there, and I am not that much of a mensch). After leaving Just Harvest, I suffered through some typical Pittsburgh Saturday traffic to make my way to Costco, picked up some cheap gas and then did some unnecessary shopping there. I followed that up by whipping out to an Aldi (I had missed Aldi last week on my shopping circuit). So I had been wanting to get to an Aldi, but of course there is also a Dollar store and a Big Lots in that strip mall as well. More unnecessary shopping and I was getting hungry, but i was also thinking about what might do about Earth Hour. The politically correct thing to do would be to buy a pillar candle or two, and wait out the hour respectfully considering the earth and energy and yada yada yada yawn. But I didn't buy the pillar and the little emergency candles I have burn out too fast.

So I thought to myself, I am hungry and I seriously doubt the typical Pittsburgh restaurateur has heard of Earth Hour (may a few, but I thought not many would have). I figured what better way to leave my lights off in my apartment than by not being in my apartment for the hour. That little Thai place in Regent Square seemed like a god bet (it always seemed like it wasn't very busy). Turned out Saturday night is a different story. I sat in the coffee shop across the street, and waited for a bit to see if it might empty ... a bit (I was hungry).

It didn't. So I just went to Taco Bell, ate a Fresco Burrito, read some of Charlie Pierce's new book "Idiot America" (courtesy of the Library). I am going to have to report back on that book after I finish it (and probably buy it, it is that good so far).

Here's where I might say something profound or at least witty .... or sumpin'

Got nothing.

Happy Earth Hour.

Words fail me ...

OK, donations are down, in this time of the "Great Recession" (as someone, maybe Bob Herbert, put it). Times are tough, and yet, I don't think this was inevitable, or at least, I would have hoped it was not inevitable.

I am speaking of the apparent demise of ACORN.

Now, for a long time I was not a fan of ACORN. To me, they were people who wanted to hit me up for money, and, besides, despite the liberal school I went to, I thought ACORN's politics were pretty far to the left of my own, and therefore, unrealistic (yeah. pretty arrogant of me).

A brief tangent, I have to say I am not the person ACORN was interested in helping. A white male, I went to what I consider a pretty good college. I know how to dress to impress (at least superficially) and I can be reasonably articulate. I don't make as much money as I should, but not because I didn't have the leg up my skin tone and education should have given me. If I happen to get a letter from a government agency, I should be able to navigate the issue reasonably well. ACORN did not feel like I deserved their help.

I started to pay more attention to ACORN during the Obama campaign, when they were accused of committing voter fraud, trying to steal the election. Somewhere along the way, I heard that ACORN helped people with foreclosures.

Now I should repeat that for the last four years I have worked at Just Harvest, preparing taxes for low income people at the IRS free site that Just Harvest hosts. So my view of groups that work with the poor has changed. I accept that some, maybe many of the people who come in with only $4000 in W-2 income have other income they aren't reporting, possibly but not necessarily illegal in nature. I suspect they know that I have suspicions, but I am supposed to take what they say on face value. I mean, I don't want to go too deeply into this, but I will just to say I have a lot of sympathy for the ACORN employees that dealt with James O'Keefe.

So now ACORN is out of business. Let's not forget that the same Congress that so courageously voted to enact health care reform previously voted to "de-fund" ACORN, essentially validating all the shitty charges conservatives had made about ACORN. And of course the media, including the New York Times, had their role in dutifully repeating the charges James O'Keefe leveled at ACORN. The media as a whole essentially praised the criminal and vilified the innocent (OK, not totally innocent but at worst, those with poor judgment). The NYTimes gave a tepid non-apology a few days ago. They managed to get it in right before ACORN folded, so I guess they can sleep pretty well at night. As can people like O'Keefe, and all those Congress-persons.

Probably the only people who will have trouble sleeping are those who are worried about losing their house, or their jobs. Those people who have no access to the rapidly receding safety net. Which now includes ACORN's former employees.

The day after, or "I freed who!" ...

The punch line to an old joke about Abraham Lincoln. Paul Krugman has what I consider to be a pretty summary of how we got here. I'll wait while you go read it ...

So I would only expand on a couple of his ideas. Clearly (in my opinion) Obama wanted some degree of Republican participation in writing the bill. Now, I wouldn't have gone that route personally, and I suspect the Congressional Democrats would not have welcomed Republicans to the table, certainly not in the House. On the other hand, you may remember that when Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and our Arlen approached Harry Reid regarding the stimulus bill (over a year ago), they got pretty much all they wanted. So who knows, but the Republicans decided early on to go a different road, one of whipping up public sentiment against the bill (hey, it worked in 1993).

When the bill was started, at least some versions of it included a public option, a government run health insurance plan that would have provided low cost health insurance to the poor. This would have made our reformed health insurance market look a bit like Switzerland's, with a tightly regulated private market and including a government plan. By the way, we are number one in spending per capita on health care, but the Swiss are number two, so it is not like the original plan was too radical. Except that it was, at least for Democrats in conservative states. I've already talked about my feelings about the bill, so I will leave it at that.

So the Republicans did not give Obama a defeat yesterday (jumping forward to today). And for ever after, Obama will be the President who passed health care reform. It may be that the Republicans will re-take the Congress in November, and repeal the bill, but that won't change the fact that it passed on Obama's watch.

But I don't think it is bad for the Republicans that they couldn't block the bill. They now have their wedge and fear issue, which they can ride all the way to November.

Even back two Novembers ago, the country was pretty evenly split between voting for the crazy old guy and the cool and articulate but black guy. A little more than half of the voting public either enthusiastically or reluctantly voted for Obama. And part of what he ran on was health care reform. Things have obviously changed since then, and Obama might not win if the election were held today. Or more importantly, the county may decide, state by state or district by district, to return Congress to the Republicans. That may happen if the Republicans can use HCR as a "fear" issue. It speaks poorly of us as a country if that works, but realistically it has a chance.

We'll see.

Sunday is my fun day ...

Or at least the day I have time to stop and relax, and perhaps write. Today a lot of other people will be working, taking a vote that they know will be spun by one side or the other in the fall. This legislation is sufficiently complicated that both sides will claim extreme consequences Monday regardless of how the vote goes today. Jason Altmire, among hundreds of others, will be vilified very loudly by one side or the other, and praised more faintly by the other side (or other).

Of course, Altmire is sort of special to our region in that of course first, his district is close to Pittsburgh but also that he was supposed to be the expert in health care and insurance. His expertise was supposed to help guide the Democrats in health care reform. Now we have reached a final vote, and Altmire wants to vote against his party's bill, ostensibly because of what the voters in his district are saying. It is probably a vocal minority that is complaining loudly about the Democratic bill. To be fair, in electoral calculus, it is hard to gauge the effect of a vocal minority, whether their sure turnout at the polls outweighs everyone else's possible turnout, or whether the vocal minority might have an effect on other voters. But it is still not hard to be disappointed with Altmire; as a Democrat and also the supposed expert he has no alternative to his own parties' bill. But I don't live in his district, so I have no vote and would feel bad doing any more than blogging about it (I shouldn't choose someone else's representation in Congress).

I feel I would be remiss if I didn't address Jack Kelly's column today, but in keeping with my more recent practice I am not going to spend a lot of time with him. Today he is suggesting that the method being used to pass health care is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will declare the reform bill unconstitutional. He also suggests that the Court will be motivated to do so because of Obama's (unprecedented, according to Kelly) snub to the Court during the State of the Union address. Now, I looked and didn't find where I think he talked about this snub to the Supreme's in a past column. But Kelly's undisguised glee that the Court might act not because the Congressional procedure is in fact unconstitutional, but rather because Robert's and the other conservatives on the Court are holding a grudge is fairly slimy, even for a columnist.

Now, despite the myth that the Court decides all decisions based solely on the Constitution (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, even the Libertarians don't believe that, in fact, that is their complaint), they actually have to navigate the tricky path of adhering to an imperfect constitution (it allowed slavery, and only allowed male property owners to vote) and addressing public opinion that either pushes for or pushes against progress (usually both, and loudly). For myself, given the history of the Court (Dred Scott versus Brown v Board of Education), I have no more respect for them than I do for the average Congressman or President. They all actually do tough jobs, but they kind of do them in an average manner.

I hope Kelly's wrong, that the Court won't get involved in Health Care. He may be right, certainly the conservatives/Republicans will scurry to find anything to sink Obama, and hope that will be enough to propel them into control of Congress. Of course, I would question the morality of the Republicans/conservatives position (I'll wait while you stop laughing) but the reality is that the Republicans/conservative seem determined to do anything to stop health care/insurance reform and at least some want to do that because they want to stop Obama. Which brings us back to the question of their motivation (saving Americans from bad reform versus damaging a landmark President with a landmark agenda).

HCR - scary initials

I believe I have posted here before about health care/insurance reform, but not for a while. I have been talking about it in many other places, most recently responding to annoying comments on Facebook. But there has been something on my mind that I did not feel I could post on FB without fear of being called a turncoat. That something is that I think the Democrat's bill in Congress really sucks. I can see no mechanism for cost controls, private insurance is left in place, yada, yada, yada. But here's the thing, and there's no getting around this (I love saying early West Wing like things): the alternative is not single payer or even Swiss-like regulated private insurance. The alternative is doing nothing, waiting maybe another fifteen years to approach health care/insurance reform again.

I am sure I have talked about the hidden tax, the cost of employer provided health insurance premiums that are passed on to everyone. It's not just union shops that have employer provided health insurance, so do colleges and universities, insurance firms (including Highmark and UPMC, ironic, no?), banks, the government, etc etc etc. Everything costs more because the insurance companies can charge what they want. And if someone can show me a study that proves offering health insurance across state borders works, I will be pleased to read and comment. But from personal experience dealing with a national insurance company (and their customer service department located who knows where) that has a presence in Pennsylvania, remote health insurance companies bring with them unique problems.

Now, I don't think the Democratic plan really does anything for the hidden tax, and that is something we are going to need to deal with soon, but again, the alternative is not passing a phantom Republican plan. Even if Republicans have introduced bills, they are not on anyone's radar, so they might as well not exist.

So I will grit my teeth and continue to defend the Democrat's HCR bill, particularly against false Republican accusations like saying the Public Option will ruin our health care and cause huge waits for procedures (*actually seen on FaceBook). That particular statement is false because the current bill *has* *no* *public* *op-* *tion*.

But I wanted to say I'm not stupid, this bill is only slightly better than nothing. That that is so is a topic for another post.

(It would be OK with me, Barry, if you want to go ahead and call the other members of your party a bunch of self interested, self serving jerks whose only redeeming quality is that they are slightly less self interested and self serving than their Republican counterparts. But that redeeming quality is off set by the Republicans ability to get their message out.)

Should we put a parking chair in the parking garages...

So I am relatively confused about what is happening with the parking garages. We should realize that it was over a year ago that the Mayor first floated the idea of leasing the garages. Now, I can't tell you what has taken him so long to get going on this, but I guess since City Council is interested in at least studying the matter, if not an alternative plan, suddenly the Mayor needs to start threatening people (again).

My questions start with the fact that the City will lose a revenue source. Now, I will have to look (when I have time) at some City budgets, to see what the City is giving up, and, perhaps, gaining in lowered payments to the pension fund. Maybe. If the City goes with the Mayor's plan, we will lose control of the parking garages. I believe I read an article that indicated the lessee could immediately (over three years) increase parking rates to "market levels", then increase rates rather more slowly. I have a feeling those three years would be kind of painful. But the City would (might) get a couple of hundred million to put in the pension fund. Hopefully the City wouldn't squander it.

On the other hand, if the City followed the Lamb/Dowd plan would give the pension fund a steady source of revenue for some time to come, perhaps until the automobile disappears. But we won't have that big infusion of cash that frankly might be required by state law (the legislature). The Mayor may in fact have that in mind. All of elected City government belongs to the Democratic party, but in a conflict between the Mayor and the Council, the legislature might decide to side with the Mayor.

But to me, the most interesting thing is that Bill Peduto and Pat Dowd might be working together on this. Not that this should be surprising. When Pat Dowd was (first) running for Council, in spring of 2007, he advocated such progressive ideas as transparency in government and tackling the debt the City carries (including the pension debt). Pat Dowd the campaigner was someone very similar to Bill Peduto the councilman, or at least the image Bill Peduto would like to project. The past couple of years has seen the two men steadily moving to two different camps, at odds. But perhaps they have now (finally) found an issue they can agree on. As I said, that is an interesting thing.

Blog for shared misery ... er, Equality, 2010

A couple of local bloggers had sent around an email to other local bloggers asking them to post on gay marriage on this, the Blog for Equality Day 2010. And I am happy to do so, although I got a late start this morning (something happened with the clocks yesterday ????) and I couldn’t type anything ‘til now.

I have to say about the only thing I have to offer is to repeat a shtick I heard from some stand up guy (and I will probably mangle it). I remember he was setting it up by talking about how on a gay beach you will see these gay guys, and they are tan and obviously have time to work out and follow a careful diet and they look relaxed, non-stressed and great (this is, of course, a stereotype, but work with me here, people). Then you look at the straight men and women and they are pale and do not have time to work out or eat carefully (and it shows) and they have stressed features and lines and all. And the comedian says if the gays want to get married, please, let’s let them. Misery loves company (not that there’s anything wrong with it, … or does that work there?).

Well, it was funnier on TEEVEE. There are economic arguments against gay marriage, and then there are the religious/social arguments about the love that dare not speak its name. The economic arguments run along the line of not extending benefits to domestic partners (of the same gender) and perhaps inheritance rights. I believe I heard gay promiscuity blamed in part for not wanting to give domestic partners benefits, but oddly that supports the need for gay marriage. I would think my employer was being reckless if it extended health insurance to boyfriends or girlfriends (regardless of the employee’s sexual orientation), but a married partner implies the whole legal obligation. So by all means, let’s clear that up by establishing that people can get married regardless of orientation, and that they are married, with all the rights but also all of the obligations (and I guess all the stress).

As for the religious/social arguments, well, I don’t know if Gandhi was as nice as Ben Kingsley says he was, or what Morgan Freeman’s baritone timbre would tell us, or even what Hay-Seuss would drive. The West Wing had an episode (“The Midterms”, thank you Google) where Martin Sheen lectured a Dr Laura-like about how the Old Testament says more than just don’t be homosexual. There was also the bit about not eating shellfish, yes to selling daughters into slavery, football players not being able to touch pigskin, and putting people to death for working on the Sabbath.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a committed lapsed Unitarian who plans to maybe possibly attend services after the tax season, and I firmly believe in my own fuzzy interpretation of the New Testament gospels .. blessed are the cheese-makers (purveyors of dairy products in general) and the Greeks … er meek (which is nice, they get so little). Love thy neighbor, unless he or she is of thy same gender, in which case, only like thy neighbor in a socially appropriate way.

That sort of thing. That's what I'm for, sort of.

Sunday in the Park with Jack ...

So a lot of people, conservatives and liberals, are criticizing Obama. I don't know anything about John (oops, *Jackson*) Diehl of the Washington Post, but he wrote a piece with some criticisms of Obama on Wednesday. So of course Jack Kelly repeats only the criticisms, and suggests that the only reason Americans think Obama has a good foreign policy is because they don't read enough Ralph Peters.

I have some problems with Obama's foreign policy, because I am not sure it will work. But alternatives, such as hastily leaving Iraq or Afghanistan, will likely not produce a desirable result. Indeed some Republicans have expressed approval of Obama's foreign policy, but for Jack Kelly the criticism is all that is important. He belongs to that wing of the conservatives/Republicans that feel that it is worth it to destroy the country to drive a (black) Democrat from the White House.

Enough of Kelly. There was also a third meeting of the Coffee Party Movement in Pittsburgh yesterday, at the Galleria Panera. My count was 33 people, but I arrived late. I don't think anything was decided, but the discussion was civil. I don't know whether top down leadership was a more progressive and activist national leadership will succeed in giving the Pittsburgh group a definite direction and set of goals, or whether the Pittsburgh group will become like the League of Women voters, describing all sides of an issue. For myself (as I believe I stated before) I would like to see some activism on local issues and candidates at least. The primaries are pretty soon, so now is the time to act.

The Squirrel Hill group may meet on Thursday at the Panera in the old Howard Johnson's in Oakland. But that is contingent on being able to get the room there. So even that is a wait and see kind of thing.

NYTimes Conservatives

A Facebook commenter who styles himself a libertarian was describing sources he would not trust, such as all the liberal blogs and the New York Times. Perhaps there is something to that view, as two of the so-called conservative NYTimes columnists surprised me recently. Ross Douthat said, in a posting on his blog, that any tax reform should still contain some progressive elements (in other words, a flat tax is not appropriate for tax reform). And in today's NYTimes David Brooks does a surprisingly accurate job of describing Obama's politics.

In the past year and a half, Brooks has switched from praising the political, oratorical and intellectuals gifts Obama has, to accurately describing and analyzing Obama's actions and predicaments, to essentially carrying the water for his fellow conservatives by lying about Obama's actions and intentions (including when he accused Obama of telling lies to the American people). Need less to say, I have become very ambivalent, at best, about Brooks. But in today's column, for whatever reason, he gives a very even handed and reasonable description of Obama's politics (it's worth reading). He starts by pointing out the flaws in the views of Obama of both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

There are a couple of points where I think his analysis could use some clarifications. He states that (he thinks) there are not any cost containment measures in the (a?) health care bill currently in Congress. That may be true, but if the public option had survived in the bill, something Mr Brooks, among many others, fought against (and lied about), there might well have been downward pressure on both health insurance premiums and health providers charges. Obviously a single payer option would have addressed both issues, but both have been demonized out of any chance of passage in the Congress.

Second, Mr Brooks calls Obama (accurately, IMO) a center left pragmatist looking for a moderate middle to work with to pass moderately progressive legislation. But, says Mr Brooks, the voters are in information cocoons, listening only to the extreme views on their side of the political spectrum. I believe Brooks is saying there is no moderate middle in Congress right now, because of the pressure from the views of the political extremes. To the extent that that is true (and I have to say I think it is an accurate reflection of current reality), I blame the media, ever willing to report the views of the leaders of extreme groups instantly, and the internet for flattening information, so a determined chorus from the extremes can gain more attention than their usually inaccurate view deserve.

But I still believe that some politicians ran for office to help people, regardless of how they define helping people. I think that if they felt they would not be portrayed by opposition interest groups as villains, they might be willing to compromise and vote for legislation that does at least some good. But that would take an effort by those who have the ability to reach large numbers of people to get the voting public to calm down and let their legislators actually do their jobs.

I wonder about the coincidence of Brooks writing this column the day before the Coffee Party has its kick off nationwide meeting. Perhaps Brooks is sending an implicit message that he approves of the goal of promoting civility in politics, and of getting legislators to listen to the majorities in their districts and take action based on the will of the people.

Or maybe Brooks got out of the left side of his bed today.

What are we doing?

Sorry about the delay in posting. Still doing a job and a half, so for another month and change, I won't have much extra time.

I went to another "coffee party" meeting. The driving impulse of the people I've met seems to be a desire to get a seemingly stalled government moving again. But past that, there is not yet an agreed upon set of goals. There does seem to be a desire to facilitate civil communication between liberals and conservatives. I think the end goal of that would be to then get both groups to speak to their elected representatives, and present ideas that the two sides had agreed upon. But there is a long road before that, including another potentially divisive election this year.

Changing tack somewhat, at the two coffee party meetings I have gone to, I expressed an idea that was not much more than thinking aloud, but seemed to be well received. This is the way it goes: By now, we all (should) know that the rest of the industrialized world has more government involvement in health care. European and Asian countries, plus Canada and Latin American countries all have either single payer or heavily regulated private insurance. Why did they do this? Because they realized that not doing it would allow a much worse health care/insurance system. What would that much worse system look like? Well ... us. We are the poster child for why government involvement in the health care and insurance arena is so necessary. Think about that. The richest country in the world, the envy of the world in many ways, and we are making are nation figuratively sick with our unregulated health care/insurance system.

People seemed to be able to digest that idea pretty well. What do you think?

Civility may be overated ...

So I did sign up with the Coffee Party (Coffee Party capitalized, not capitalized??? - today caps). I was thinking this might be a way to push myself out there a bit into politics, but maybe on my terms. After all, the Coffee Party is brand new, and while the people who started it in DC may have an idea of how they want to proceed, out here in the sticks we are still thinking about how to define ourselves (or not, more about that in a bit). I even signed the civility pledge.

So I looked at the Coffee Party website today and noticed there was a new widget, which was maybe local chapters(?)... So I didn't do anything with it until I got home from work. Well, the new widget, which on the main page was a US map with a bunch of pins, was in fact a listing of the closet local Coffee Party meeting to whomever, by zip code. So I punched in my zip ... hmmm, a group in Greensburg on the 13th. Nah. Norths Hills, meeting on March 3rd, at 7:00pm (I am reading that on March 3rd at 5:50pm, while dinner is in the microwave). I wolfed down dinner and tore out to the Panera on McKnight Road.

There were eight of us, one guy had been a member since last Friday, or maybe a couple of days before that. He had emailed the DC people about whether there was a Pittsburgh group or chapter or whatever, and had gotten a call from the DC people asking him if he wanted to set one up. That's how we got there.

So we chatted about what we thought the Coffee Party should be, for the Pittsburgh area and in general. We were, not surprisingly, all Obama fans and basically all progressives, although we were more diverse than you might expect.

There will be some sort of meeting on the 13th, one that I will likely not be able to attend, as part of the nationwide kick off of the Coffee Party. It remains to be seen how much the local news will take an interest.

But I think that the Coffee Party could be as or possibly more valuable in Pittsburgh than on the national level. Because the Democratic party has such a lock on the City, which is to say the Democratic committee has such a lock on the city, the East End coffee house progressives have not had much maneuvering room. I mean, they basically got Pat Dowd elected (and played a role in getting Bruce Kraus in too), but Dowd has charted a somewhat different course, which gave East End progressives the sense of disenchantment a year before the supporters of Obama developed it. But I think that the concept of a Coffee Party Democrat might gain traction, which is to say politicians taking on an added label, to indicate they support civility in discussion and finding intelligent, fact based solutions to issues and problems. This is something I think Bill Peduto could sign onto in a heartbeat, but also Shields, Kraus, Rudiak, perhaps Burgess (although he may not want to give up the ability to protest loudly when needed) and even perhaps Dowd, since these ideas were so important to him when he first campaigned.

Meanwhile, I am going to have to think about this civility pledge. It is going to be awfully hard to remain civil when some conservative commenter on another blog makes some snide and derogatory remark. Maybe I can chide them about their manners.

Coffee, tea ... Everclear?

So have you heard of the coffee party? It was formed just recently, I am not quite sure when. A woman, Anna Park (I think), had posted a comment or complaint on Facebook to the effect of why do you have join the tea party if you are unhappy with the government right now? Is there anything for the rest of us? She joked about calling this other thing the cappuccino party. Apparently she got a lot (relatively speaking) of response, and so the coffee party was born. It might be primarily a Facebook thing, although I don’t think it will stay there. Right now it is somewhere around 60,000 members (I think it might have been around for a month), not much in national terms but not bad for a month old internet flash mob.

Now when I say the rest of us, I think Ms Park had the Obama supporters of 2008 in mind in particular. You know, the Democrats and independents who watched Obama have early successes with the Lily Ledbetter Act and the stimulus package (mostly a successs) and other things, and then watched Congress get bogged down in the healthcare thing, with Republicans throwing everything in its path to slow it down; the Obama supporters who have become disaffected. Supposedly the coffee party supports particularly the idea that the government is not working right now but it is not the enemy. The coffee party does not want to return to the ideas of founding fathers per se, they want to help government function now. They want to promote civility and discourse, and find working solutions for our problems. So in theory the coffee and tea parties are working in parallel directions, but with different emphases.

Critics (and there are some already) around the web don’t believe it. One issue is that Ms Park’s resume includes a stint working at the New York Times, time working on the campaign of Jim Webb, and time working on Obama’s campaign. This is why I was saying I think she has Obama supporters in mind for the Coffee party, and this is what critics think too. Also, on the Coffee Party website, there is a menu choice labeled “inform”. When you click on it, you find Media Matters and FactCheck dot org posts on various topics, such as the economy, healthcare reform and climate change (also one lonely Salon post on “birthers”). This is like red meat to those on the right end of the spectrum. Of course, I don’t think there is one source the right and the left would agree on as unbiased and/or objective. Which leaves you with the question of how to promote civil discourse.

So is the coffee party really just a way to get a bunch of progressives in one coffee shop talking about the same thing at the same time? Maybe. And maybe that is not such a bad idea. I mean, it seems like Washington and the whole country might need that other idea, the group that acts like a ref between the right and left, encouraging civil conversation rather than polemics. But since there is no one (short of James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman or perhaps the Allstate guy Dennis Haysbert) that both sides trust enough to insult them when they are in the wrong, I think we have to settle for a progressive party. And hope they speak in wonky enough language to persuade some of those on the fence.

The Needle (ow) in the Haystack

It's a shame Bram Reichbaum stopped writing the Pittsburgh Comet. The perfect example is that he posted a (by definition) short message on Twitter: "Sweet Merciful Pete http://is.gd/9syh7 we'd best be careful about how we finally address CBDG $. And why ONLY address Walking Around Money?" The PG story he links to is here. I don't particularly have any Council or media contacts, and it is not like I even have a lot of time right now to follow the news. But assuming the TeeVee news is not covering it, and the PG is only doing as much as I have linked to, I would say this deserves more attention than it is getting.

So the basic story is that Ricky Burgess feels that Community Development Block Grants allocated to Pittsburgh have not been spent entirely on the poorest neighborhoods. It is (apparently) expected that Pittsburgh will get 16.5 million this year.

One issue seems to be that the CDBG's are used to fund City Services in distressed neighborhoods, allowing the City to spend more of its normal operating revenue in wealthier neighborhoods, meaning the services are higher for all neighborhoods. Except that wasn't what the CDBG's were intended for.

Another issue that is likely to get disproportionate interest is that a small part, $675,000, of the CDBG money has historically been split up among Council members at $75,000 each. Burgess wants to pro-rate that based on the relative wealth of the neighborhoods involved. So Natalia Rudiak's portion would drop to $17,495, while Doug Shields part would drop to $32,618. Obviously this doesn't seem to be the way to make friends on council for the man who wanted to be Council President. On hte other hand, it has the sticky value of being fair.

Now, I don't know what Council members get in the way of discretionary money these days. I remember a PG story from years ago about some fund Council members had to spend on themselves (Twanda Carlisle(sp) bought herself books, Gene Riccardi bought picture frames or something?). But I believe this will mean denying money to groups in Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, who might not take too kindly to it.

One of the things that bothered me about the Bush junior administration was that we went to war (in two countries, no less) and the administration made no calls for sacrifice, much less mandating them. To be fair, I believe that was the case for the Korean and Vietnam wars as well. But Bush could have used the fact of wars in the Middle East to call for a higher gas tax, or implemented a 55 mile per hour speed limit, or called for people to conserve energy in other fashions.

Similarly, Pittsburgh has been under Act 47, distressed City status, for over five years. Yet Pittsburgh Mayors, including but not limited to Ravenstahl, have not really called on Pittsburgher's to make sacrifices. Except if Ricky Burgess is correct, the poor in Pittsburgh have been giving up assistance intended to them.

I'll bet they are not surprised.

Who's what ....

Two Political Junkies (http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/) had a post about how the Trib was refuting Arlen Specter's claim he voted with Democrats even before he turned Democrat. That post got me to to thinking about how often in general Republicans vote together, versus how often Democrats do, which led me to this thought:

Suppose you are the canonical space alien who visits earth. You understand English, and you have been told about our political systems. You have also been told that of the two political parties, Republicans value individual freedoms over government control/action, and also believe the free market is a superior economic engine and should be as free of government control as possible. Meanwhile Democrats (who also value individual freedoms in some areas - "reproductive rights") believe that the free market slips in some areas such as pollution, monopolies and even income inequity, and we are a wealthy enough nation we can stand to regulate the market some. Democrats also believe that it is a good idea to address poverty in our country, for short term humanitarian reasons but perhaps more importantly to help poor children do better than their parents (again, there is a component of us being wealthy enough to tax the rich more and transfer some money to the less wealthy).

If you (the space alien) then looked at the behavior of Representatives and Senators in Congress after hearing these descriptions of the parties, you might be forgiven if you thought the party that votes together consistently is the Democrats, while the party that, even though it holds a majority, can not seem to get its members to vote together is the Republicans. I mean, for a party that flirts with claiming the libertarian label (they certainly want the libertarians to vote for Republicans), you might think the Republicans would encourage individualism in their own party. Seems rather the opposite.

Meanwhile, the hapless Democrats seem unable to enforce discipline on their own members. I keep thinking of when the Republicans were talking about themselves as the "Big Tent" party during the early Bush II administration. Now that mantle seems to rest more naturally on Democrats, yet it only seems to have negative connotations.

Is there a point to this little essay? Not really, I just get annoyed when Republicans, who seem to have to vote as a top down monolith, talk about the importance of individual freedoms. I guess their idea of freedom is the "Donna Reed Show" or "Leave it to Beaver" late fifties freedom, when everyone just happened to agree (or at least everyone whose opinion mattered).

Another Sunday, another Kelly column ...

Well, and also Meet the Press. Kelly's column was once again interesting,and had parts I might even agree with. Kelly starts by complaining that the health-care summit this past Thursday amounts to nothing more than a disingenuous ploy, since Democrats would never agree to start over on health care/insurance reform. Now, we know that many Presidents have tried to push throw through some health care/insurance reform. Who among us can say that when the Democrats were thrown out in 1994, the republicans said "Now let's start over". So, coming back to today, after passing bills in the House and Senate in the face of all the vitriol the Republicans, the Republicans are saying lets start over, and by the way, let's do everything our way.

Then Kelly mentioned three proposals, and I have say I would be interested. First and most important, Kelly suggested allowing drugs to be imported in at the foreign prices. Sounds fine to me. Kelly also suggested allowing some drugs to be changed from prescription to over the counter, and also shortening the time needed to develop new drugs. I understand the economic effects of the proposals, but I would like to see the opinions of medical professionals or public health people.

But just to step back, didn't the Democrats want negotiation with the drug companies when Medicare part D negotiations were going on a dew years ago? Didn't the Democrats talk about allowing drugs to be re-imported back then? Kelly says something ludicrous about how pharmaceuticals are helping the Democrats, so Kelly wants to take away their ability to make obscene profits. Well, whatever. If the Republicans want to help on this one part of health-care/insurance, seems fine to me.

Meanwhile, on the Meet The Press, John McCain complained about back room deals made by Democrats. That makes me think it might be nice to have a historian to remind viewers how much Republicans did this during their four years of Congressional control (from January 2003 on). And Eric Cantor said that the Republicans were also all about cost containment. Really, that is the first time I have heard that. And it seems like local conservative commenters have not expressed any interest in cost containment. But Cantor was part of the round table, and David Gregory allowed Ron Brownstein (of some news service) to act as the scorekeeper. So Brownstein was able to say that both (the Democratic and Republican) plans would affect existing insurance plans about the same, except that the Democrats would make the minimum plan a little higher than what the Republicans might. Brownstein also pointed out the Democrat plan would only allow about a one percent in increase in health costs, and while it would have increased costs over the Republican plan, it would insure an additional 33 million people compared to the 3 million the Republicans would cover. Which puts things in perspective.

The only other comment I will make is that I get annoyed when Republicans drape themselves in this mantle of public disapproval they claim Americans have for health care/insurance reform as passed by the Democrats. they keep saying the American people are tired of this or that. The Republicans have through the town meetings, the death panel rant and the creation of the Tea Party (which may come back to haunt them) made health care/insurance reform into an issue similar to abortion or gun control. As we should know, Americans (as expressed in polls) do not want to ban either guns or abortions, but they are willing to entertain limitations on both. In the case of health care/insurance reform, I don't believe Americans would be unhappy with either single payer or even the public option, but I believe Americans want something. The question is whether Democrats can succeed in blaming Republicans this November for the failure of health care/insurance reform, assuming that becomes needed.

Is it a sign of im-maturity or a sneaky new maturity ...

Sometime last week, the Mayor's campaign chair and I believe the Mayor's brother and possibly other friends of the Mayor went to Mardi Gras. We can only guess that the Mayor might have gone too, if not for the lingering effect of Snowmagedden 2010. But we now know that he didn't go. What did happen was that there were discussions about extending the City's state of emergency on Monday of last week, with the general understanding that the Mayor wanted to do that. The extension was signed on Tuesday by public safety director Mike Huss. Apparently some on Council thought the Mayor, as the top City official should sign, unless he was unavailable. Is he available, Council asked the Mayor's staff. Wellllll, he is in the City, but no one knows where. He is unavailable for cell phone calls. And so on, until a press conference late in the afternoon where the Mayor told the press he was teaching them a lesson.

And so we talked about that for a while. The PG had a fairly scathing (unsigned) editorial raking the Mayor over the coals for his juvenile behavior. And I basically agree with that, except that ....

I can't help feeling like the Mayor has once again gotten away with something, and that he is getting better at getting away with it, he is learning. He used to just hang tough and tell us he was right and his accusers were wrong. Now he is learning tricks.

At the start of the snow storm the Mayor was trapped at Seven Springs, at a celebration of his birthday. The Mayor maintains no one could have know, but we all know that was so much BS. He was staying at a cabin or lodge which he (or whomever) paid for, to a Pittsburgh business. Now, in all honesty I don't know if the Mayor has said how much he paid to any reporter or if the Mayor has reported the amount, all I know is that he told one reporter that it was none of his business how much he paid. Given this Mayor's record on reporting the value of gifts he has accepted, a refusal to say how much he paid is essentially an admission that he knows he did something wrong. And then there is the matter of the man who died because paramedics refused to go to him. Now that clearly wasn't specifically the Mayor's fault, although the poor example he set in skipping town doesn't help much. But neither of these issues will be talked about as much because the Mayor's juvenile game has taken center stage.

Which makes me wonder if that was what the Mayor intended all along, when he became unavailable on Tuesday.

Reasons and reasons ....

(this one ran long)

As I have before, I will make a comment on Jack Kelly's column today Presidential Petulance, but only a brief one. His topic today might be that the Obama administration is exercising bad judgment, using the example of the trial of Kahlid Sheikh Mohammad. But Kelly doesn't talk about intelligence secrets coming out in civil court, or even the laughable claim that allowing terrorists to appear at a trial will somehow expose Americans (particularly New Yorkers) to Islamic propaganda. But Kelly doesn't really mention that, he only talks about how no one wants terrorist trials in their own city. I guess Kelly's hidden message is that terrorists should be tried in military tribunals. Now personally I think we should have faith in our legal system and in fact put it on display for all the world. If it means that terror suspects (remember, they haven't been convicted) go free because the ham fisted government (under either Bush or Obama) mistreated suspects in an illegal manner, or because the evidence against them is weak or non-existent, then the worls will see we take our own rules seriously. And Kelly can go live in Russia or China or some country that has laws and procedures he approves of.

But Kelly, who doesn't quote the President directly in his column, appears to just want to call the President names. His last word: "The president's petulance at not getting his way overcomes good judgment."

The lack of reasons for policy proposals continued when I watched "Meet the Press". First Tim Pawlenty talked about the need to reduce spending (read: assistance to the poor) and reduce taxes (read: increase profit for business) and the need to get government out of the way of business to help create jobs including things like not having no card check (read: jobs but low wages and no benefits).

Understand, the gap between rich and poor has widened since the 1950's. It widened hugely in the 1980's when Reagan "reformed" the tax rates (taking out some deductions, yes, but cutting the top tax rate in half). The rate of increase of the widening has risen (during Republican administrations) and fallen (during some Democratic administrations), but the gap between rich and poor has been increasing for more than fifty years.

Some time in the 1960's, as the civil rights movement grew from a southern issue into a national issue, pressure grew for the government to assist the poor, to level the playing field to some extent. Why is that important? Well, there is a new report from the OCED about how important parental income is for a child's earnings (roughly 48% for the US, 49% for Italy and 50% for Germany). It was, of course, much worse in the 1960's (remember there were riots in Philadelphia, Watts, Newark, Baltimore and DC). Meanwhile, the war in Vietnam changed in the minds of first a minority and then a political majority of Americans from helping heroic Vietnamese stand of the tyranny of communism to vicious Americans bullying and massacring innocent Vietnamese (and by the way no argument on my part that communism in practice is in fact totalitarian). Civil rights, Vietnam and other social issues combined to create a liberal synergy, even as there was a minority/majority backlash (Nixon in '72) which became a full fledged change in direction in the 1980's.

But some aid to the poor has stayed in place even today. Pawlenty and the conservatives on the discussion panel on Meet the Press didn't mention things like the Earned Income Credit and Medicaid by name as things to eliminate (although Pawlenty did use the magic word "entitlements", the assistance the government gives everyone else besides me). In fact, Republicans might not even want to eliminate those programs. because the actual negative effect of making poor people even poorer might be more riots and political tensions, and the effect of denying medical assistance to the poorest might be the elderly or chronically ill dying on the sidewalks.

Still, the Republicans are proposing that un-named government programs must be slashed, and we need tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Now, there was a tax cut in the '60's that did help some, although the actual timing, effect and causes for the results are somewhat debated. But right now I regard Republicans calls for tax cuts as giveaways to wealthier voters, particularly since I can see firsthand the poorer tax payers don't pay any taxes at all. Will employers who save money with a tax cut say to themselves, I could use this extra money to hire another worker, or should I keep it myself? Well, the employer is getting the money from a tax cut (not from extra work), so why hire another worker, especially when you can get a 50" home theater? We have already seen many wealthier Americans show large amounts of greed in the mid 2000's buying houses hoping to "flip" them.

So the debate on the surface in America has to do with first how legislation passed during Obama's first year has not worked. The number or percentage of uneplmoyed people contains far too many wealthy people (Republicans have never expressed concern for the number of unemployed black youths, even even much concern for the number of slain black youths). Second, Congress has produced a huge, overly bureaucratic health reform bill. And third, congress hasn't passed a health bill because it hadn’t gone through reconciling committee, which is part of the narrative that government is actually frozen. So Obama, while being too aggressive in allowing Congress to pass bills, has also not been aggressive enough in pushing Congress to pass bills. And although Obama had tax cuts in the stimulus bill (which Congress also worked on), they were the wrong kind of tax cuts because they hadn’t come from Republicans.

But I think the debate underneath the surface is actually whether the government should help people, or maybe who the government should help. Republicans have made it clear that they are willing and want to talk about how Americans (voters) are angry at the government. They are willing to pay lip service to the idea that the Bush years were bad, as long the conversation moves to how bad the Democrats are now. And the Republicans want to talk about how Democrats are thwarting the will of the majority of American voters who elected them by not allowing the Republicans who were elected by a minority of Americans to actually set the legislative agenda and write the legislation.

But the legislation they happen to mention wanting to pass is the problem. As I mentioned before, I suspect the tax cuts the Republicans want to pass will only benefit wealthy Americans. Tax cuts that have helped the rich in the past have not trickled down to the poor, not even in part. I mean, maybe the Republicans could take a page from the Democrats playbook and claim the gap between rich and poor would be even wider without trickle down economic policies.

Really, the fundamental debate is whether we as a people agree government has an obligation should make an effort to help poor people, or whether it should only help the rich (facilitate the markets). Now, we have already established government should help senior citizens, although senior citizens are the wealthiest age group. Yeah, some are buying cat food, but statistically they are doing better than the rest of us. And parts of the debate are probably incorrectly framed. Even though health insurance was originally offered as an inducement to work at a particular company, I believe corporations have over time realized that healthy workers (who don’t take time to visit sick kids or a sick spouse) are productive workers. So a single payer or heavily regulated private market universal health insurance system would benefit us all. But past that, should government financially help families of one or two parents raise kids? Does that help those kids become more productive citizens? Or is it something we should do because we have enough 50” plasma TV’s and SUV’s?

Clearly the Republicans think that an economic downturn is the right time to make the argument that we do not have enough to help our poor. But if some wealthy are suffering now, all the poor are suffering more. In any event, I believe that is the real debate that is going on. I think for a brief moment, literally, in October of 2008 while we were in shock from the market drop and watching John McCain dodder around a town hall and complain, we maybe also thought that electing a black man could help us to take steps to absolve us of our sins (those of us who might admit in the dark of night that we have sins). But now many of us have decided to go back to blaming the government for our problems, and every one else’s too (isn't the phrase "government is the problem"). Meaning don’t touch the money you give me, just cut off everyone else.

Jack Kelly and a bit more ...

Well, I am still not posting quite as mush as I should (cough *taxes*), but when Jack Kelly pens a column on global warming, it is a bit like catnip to blogging tabby ... or something. Anyway, I read Kelly column this morning, and then read Davoe's post on it on 2 Political Junkies a bit later. But I swear I came up with my own independent conclusions ahead of reading 2PJ's (which actually probably aren't Davoe's anyway). And those conclusions are .... ah, I got nothing.

Wait no, I was just having a bit of fun with you, I really do have something, which is that Jack complains through the whole column about what journalists are saying about global warming, as if that proves something. Then, at the end, he quotes someone from the National Review complaining about how US journalists aren't covering the stolen emails from east Anglia, and how those emails invalidate the whole of global warming. To which my reaction was "Wha ...?".

I mean, Kely is right about a bit here and there. Kelly mentions a converation on the View and how the women got some specifics wrong on global warming (while making a different point) and how Bobby Kennedy made a silly assessment and prediction a year and a half ago. Although Kelly doesn't mention it, I will throw in for free that Al Gore misquoted a climate scientist recently, Gore saying in ten years there would be no ice in the Arctic.

But here's the thing, when you listen to the scientists themselves, they are actually pretty scary. In the case of the Gore mis-quote, what the scientist said was there is a good chance that in ten years, there will be almost no ice during the summer months in the Arctic. By almost no ice, let's (not look it up on Google, but instead) be conservative and assume this guy means only 20% of the ice that is there now. When it refreezes in the winter (as it does now), it might only come back to 50%, but lets be charitable and say it comes back to 75% of what it is now. That would be from 25% to 80% of the current Arctic ice mass as either water in the ocean or water vapor in the atmosphere. The water vapor will cause perhaps heavier snow falls (look out the window?) and the water in the oceans will causes new sets of beach front property. That is certainly scary enough.

But Kelly wants to tell us that none of that will happen, because reporters are getting some facts wrong, and not covering what he thinks is important.

On an entirely different issue, I was watching the Sunday morning "talkies" this morning, and caught "Meet the Press", particularly their round table. They had David Brooks, Rachel Maddow, Harold Ford and a young Republican Representative. I am quickly warming to Rachel Maddow in these formats, she seems to be interested in the actual record of events as opposed to understanding the spin on events. I like knowing how pundits tell people to look at things, but I think Maddow's contribution is also extremely important and all too often lacking from these shows.

But Brooks had the ultimate comment, one he made straight faced giving the "conventional wisdom" (as he saw it) version of events. He said that he thought (and I paraphrase) the Obama administration had too radical an agenda, with the stimulus, healthcare and cap and trade. What Americans want now is jobs, jobs, jobs (end paraphrasing).

As if the stimulus was not supposed to provide jobs.

I mean, I sort of like David Brooks, he is not a rabid conservative, and he likes to take some thoughtful turns. But sometimes he is a transparent water carrier for conservatives, and this was one of those occasions. I can kind of forgive being conservative but this is a case of being conservative and stupid.

Up is down, right is left, etc ...

I haven't done a Jack Kelly post in a while (at least a couple of weeks), in part because I have felt I have been (or at least should be) busy. Taxes, you know. Stuff I should around the apartment. etc etc.

But of course Kelly hasn't stopped doing his thing. Last week I believe he complained about administration action on climate change. If he feels it is important he could write columns on Republican misinformation on climate change. Kelly still dances around that issue, blasting the administration for changing its strategy on the issue without admitting the importance of taking action on the issue (having his cake and eating it).

But Kelly's column this week is even more interesting. The title is "Obama Coddles bankers". Kelly goes on to say that 12 Democratic Senators hosted a retreat for 108 lobbyists, which has to do directly with Obama how? And I suspect (strongly, strongly) that Republicans have had their share or more of such retreats and other such things.

But in fact, I think a lot of Democrats are thinking that Obama has been too nice to the big banks. I think the issue is more complicated than Kelly paints it, but there is an issue there. It was the Bush administration who guided the Congress to the TARP after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the several market drops. Which is the crux of the issue. There is a knife edge course to navigate. If you help the banks too much, they get fat on taxpayer money. But if you don't help them enough, then the September/October market crash would be a walk in park. Don't believe me? What happened after Lehman brothers bankruptcy?

I will say, in all honesty, I have wondered if Obama and particularly his advisors, might be captive to the New York banks. I believe Obama and company realize the importance of keeping the banks healthy. But I realize that Timothy Geitner was the President of the New York Fed before he was Treasury Secretary, and might have an exaggerated sense of the importance of the health of the banks. Congress has not acted on bank reform yet (the members may see some peril in offending wealthy people who have donated money in the past), but has the administration done as much is it could? That is a reasonable question.

Still, Kelly’s final paragraph leaves me speechless:

“To get off "the same winding mountain road," the zombie banks need to be broken up, and strict limits placed on the amount of debt banks may incur if they've accepted federally insured deposits. But these reforms would not be popular with the banksters whose contributions fill Democratic campaign coffers.”

It is amazing that Kelly wrote that first sentence, because it is exactly the policy many if not all liberals would love to see pursued. And in fact it may have merit, but I suspect that given the way the US financial system has evolved, it is impractical (at least the break up part, the limits still seem like a god idea to me). But Kelly is insulting his readers in suggesting that bankers give only to Democrats. Of course, Kelly would argue he didn’t actually say that, which is equally insulting.

My guess is that Kelly would love to see that exact scenario, the break up of big banks, come to pass. The resulting financial chaos would give the Republicans fifty years of power, and perhaps so eviscerate the Democrats such that a new party would have to be created. The fact that millions of people would suffer and perhaps die is apparently not important to Kelly. I have been saying in various places that I am convinced conservatives want to see the country hurt. I have suggested it is because the country elected a black man, and was yelled at by a conservative who says I am tarring all conservatives with the same racist brush. So I will say I don’t know what the motivation is, but I suspect for some …

But even though up is down and right is left, I don’t entirely disagree with Kelly’s column. I believe Obama did some things this past year to avoid giving conservatives the satisfaction of saying “see, he is a radical”. Obama proposed a stimulus with some thirty percent tax cuts (Congress took that and moved the percentages around a bit), and he handed health care off to Congress altogether. Now Obama is again calling for bipartisanship (after the State of the Union address). I worry that his administrations stance towards banks is not only an attempt to keep America’s financial house in order, but also another nod to conservatives.

What ever the reason for Obama’s administration stance towards the banks, count me among those who are waiting for Obama to take action, or at least more action. If Congress gets in the way, then the administration should splash that across the headlines. But it is Obama who needs to do whatever, whether it is risking conservatives feeling vindicated or whatever.

What would you do?

So you are the Mayor of a moderate sized well known city. The weather guys are predicting a storm coming on the weekend, six to twelve inches. Maybe bad, could be really bad. As the weekend approaches, the predictions get a bit more dire. What would you do?

Abolitionist = Conservative?

Ruth Ann Dailey had a “Why I am a conservative” column yesterday, much like The Office had a flashback episode last week (maybe it is something in the air). The difference between the two is watching flashbacks of Office vignettes is satisfying, while reading Ruth Ann twisting history to suit her own particular cognitive dissonance is not.

She started and finished with descriptions of meeting groups of people who don’t understand her, which we can safely ignore. The meat of her column starts by suggesting that most people don’t think about their political beliefs; those beliefs are shaped by family, either by adopting the views of parents of rebelling against them. She suggests they are “more emotional than rational, more motivated by identity than ideals”. I have to say I agree with her on this point, my own experience bears it out. It applies, in my opinion, equally to liberals and conservatives. She also thinks the effect of the cultural landscape we grow up in shapes our views. She compares people who grew up in the Great Depression and World War II to baby boomers, and not favorably. And she tells us we share ideals – “freedom, justice, equality, opportunity, compassion, self-determination and more”, but how we see current issues depends on how we rank these ideas internally.

I am in agreement, mostly, with her up to this point. At this point she suggests our most important value is to fight tyranny, whether within “Slavery, segregation or big brother government” or without “Nazi national socialism, Soviet communism or Islamic terrorism”. This is, of course, the quintessential American myth. To me however, the timing and manner in which we ended slavery ought to be a national embarrassment (a third of white Americans were willing to kill to continue owning slaves) and the fact that segregation went on for a hundred years after the Civil War kind of indicates how strong our commitment to equal rights really was/is.

I could devote a whole post to dealing with her whole fighting tyranny thing, but I want to go on, because Ruth Ann gets a bit more outrageous. At this point she slams Ellen Goodman, who suggested the people of the sixties were “change agents for civil rights, women’s rights, gay right”. Ruth Ann gives the sixties generation credit for gay rights, but suggests that civil rights and women’s rights movements dated back much further. Ruth Ann further places herself in these past movements (though she wasn’t alive) by suggesting that “for many decades a majority, though by no means all, of those striving for abolition, desegregation and women's suffrage were the evangelical Christians whom today's "progressives" by and large despise” She further links today’s evangelical religious conservatives to the evangelicals of those past times (whom she calls social radicals) and calls them her people.

Now, it is impossible to say what Ruth Ann’s “evangelical Christian social radicals” would advocate today, the cultural divide is too weird. But I want to look at an institution that is over 150 years old, that has a sort of evangelical Christian history as well as a social radical one. It is also my alma mater, Oberlin College.

Oberlin was founded in 1833, by Presbyterian ministers. It started and maintained a strong missionary tradition. It also was the first institution of higher learning to admit African Americans and women, and a “hotbed” of abolitionist activity, including being a stop on the Underground Railroad. Now, I have to say the religious activities at Oberlin have largely faded, but the social radical aspect has not. It continues to have an extremely progressive slant (in 1970 it was one of the first schools to have co-ed dorms, for example).

But I understand where Ruth Ann is coming from, she gives us clues when she says “Beginning in the 1960s, the drive to secure basic constitutional rights morphed into an ever-expanding agenda of extra-constitutional "rights" -- efforts to enforce equality of outcomes at the expense of true liberty.” In her view, the women’s movement ended when women got the vote in 1920. African Americans achieved all they needed when segregation was ended in the sixties.

Now, again I understand what Ruth Ann is saying, even if it is silly in the extreme to say the “Great Society” was about achieving equality of outcomes. In fact, that is the direction from which I would defend the “Great Society”. It was hardly about creating a (theoretical) communist society where everyone has the same income/resources, regardless of effort or ability. Instead, the Great Society was about giving the poor access to dignified (and modern) housing, lots of training and education assistance, and specific sorts of income assistance to help them until they got the better paying jobs (such as food stamps). It was the first attempt, at least at that scale, to help a minority group change their fortunes, and like many such first attempts, it was largely a failure, both in popular culture and in reality. Again I certainly don’t think the Great Society was about equality of the finish line, to me it was clearly about trying to achieve an equality of the starting line. But even though discrimination had essentially been outlawed, racism both overt and more subtle continued and continues today. It does not help that drugs of various sorts have swept through African American communities, along with accompanying crime.

So to step back a second and make some links here, Ruth Ann wants to own the anti-slavery, civil rights and women’s suffrage movements by virtue of the fact that she is an evangelical herself, and wants to claim kinship with past evangelicals her were in these movements. Were it me, I would not be proud of the fact it took nearly a hundred years to end slavery in the US, another hundred for segregation to end, and a hundred and thirty years from the start of the nation for women to get the vote. Then Ruth Ann wants t tell us that the social radicals of more than a hundred years ago, who did care so much about their fellow humans of a different color that they were willing to give their lives for them, that those Christian evangelical social radicals would now tell African Americans that they are asking for too much government assistance. In other words, yesterday’s John Brown is today’s Glenn Beck (actually, considering the two men, maybe that one isn’t so silly).

Surely the word “conservative” itself tells us something about what those who call themselves that believe. Presumably conservatives want to conserve the status quo, because they see change as dangerous and unpredictable (and not benefiting the conservatives). Again, it is silly to make comparisons across time, but wouldn’t the conservatives of 1859 have been the people advocating compromise between the slave-holding South and the North?

Ruth Ann Dailey’s political views seem a perfect topic for a cognitive dissonance post.

Robert Parker is dead

One of my favorite authors, Robert B Parker, died Monday at 77 of a heart attack. He was the author of the Spenser books, as well as at least three other series and several one offs. I would have to characterize Parker's books as a guilty pleasure; when a new one would come out I would reserve it at the library and when I finally got my hands on it I would generally finish it in an evening. Not that I am that fast a reader, they were just that easy to read. I think Parker listed Spenser's age in the first book (36 or so, I think), but stopped referring to it after a while, as it became increasingly preposterous that Spenser was still beating people in fights into his seventies. I believe one reviewer explained this contradiction away by describing Spenser as "timeless". But I very much enjoyed the dialogue in the books.

I find it interesting that in his early Spenser novels (in the 1980's) Parker addressed feminism, in a reasonably intelligent fashion. But after a while the Spenser novels settled into a sort of comfortable groove, not really trying to notice the social issues of the real world.

I'm not sure that Parker's recent work had the same snap of his early writing, although he had branched out, writing a series with a female detective "Sunny Randall", a series with an alcoholic ex-LA detective turned small town police chief "Jesse Stone", and a western series, as well as a one off about gunfight at the OK corral and Wyatt Earp. The first book or two in each of these series were very good, after which they settled into a groove similar to Spenser's. So I won't say that Parker's best writing was behind him, but he would have needed to challenge himself with yet a different character and setting to produce more really good writing.

Still, I, for one, will miss him.

Kelly's latest distortion

I really am beginning to suspect Jack Kelly actually understands the ideas put forward by the smart members of Obama’s administrative team. Kelly understands them and could articulate them if he so chose, and actually help people understand what really happened with the Christmas “underwear” bomber. Kelly could help us understand what this incident tells us about how the government is handling its war/campaign against terrorism.

Yet Kelly has decided to go the route Fox News goes, of distorting the facts and making accusations against Obama that (in my opinion) don’t reflect reality and in fact, if the analysis of some government and news people is correct, could actually push harmful policies. In his column today, Kelly has a smart set of quotes from a senior man in Obama’s counter terrorism team, John Brennan, made during Obama's campaign in March 2008. Those first four paragraphs could have lead to a discussion about how our government is collecting so much information about possible terrorist suspect it is actually drowning in information. This is something I have read elsewhere, and which (I believe) Mr. Brennan himself has said after the underwear bomber incident. It’s not that the employees of DHS and various government agencies weren’t working hard on terrorism, it’s almost as if they are working too hard, collecting too much information, and thus becoming unable to sift through what they do have. It is possible that we need to find ways to be smarter, find those pieces of information that are more important, that will lead to possible terrorist attacks.

But Kelly, after those first four paragraphs, goes in exactly the opposite direction, and accuses Obama of telling his administration to ignore terrorism. Kelly accuses the administration of treating the underwear bomber as unimportant, and Obama himself of deciding to stay three more days in Hawaii when he was informed (three hours after the incident occurred) of the incident.

To demonstrate that I am captive to the liberal agenda, or perhaps just to tell the truth, I will point out that when the “shoe bomber” struck on December 22nd of 2001, George Bush was on vacation. He not only did not return from Camp David, he went on to Crawford. After six days he said something (one or two sentences) about the shoe bomber, but in the atmosphere of huge patriotic fervor following 9/11, no one was willing to say anything against the President, not the cowering opposition Democrats or those paragons of patriotism, the Republicans. Richard Reid was tried in a civilian court. All this only four months after 9/11. It should have been a major event, in fact a sign that even with National Guard patrolling our airports terrorists (even apparent idiots like Richard Reid) could still strike our airliners.

The thing about the underwear bomber is there were a lot of clues. But, as I said before, what I am also hearing is that the government has been pursuing a huge number of clues. What apparently happened is that there are so many clues about everything, it is hard to recognize when something really significant shows up.

But Kelly is quoting people who say that Obama is only paying lip service to fighting terrorism. If Kelly actually does understand why the government couldn’t identify the underwear bomber ahead of time, then his column, with its implication that the government needs to collect much more information, could cause our whole system to develop huge holes that terrorists could crash airliners through, or attack chemical plants, or explode nuclear bombs or nerve gas canisters in our harbors through. It’s hard for me to understand why Kelly would do advocate something he knows will be harmful to the Country. Except that if the terrorists do successfully attack the US again, it is likely the Democrats will lose the Congress in 2010 and the White House in 2012. Could a former marine, sworn to protect the United States, actually think that way? I hope not, but honestly I don’t know.

Well, maybe...

After Pat Dowd was elected and took office two years ago, I was looking forward to watching him take steps to revolutionize city government. He had campaigned on working on resolving the City’s debt, on improving citizen’s access to government, and in general on making government smarter. After he took office, as I recall he started with a pledge signed by the City Council and the Mayor for good government. But not too long after that there was the business with the LED billboard. Strangely, that event started with him opposing the Mayor, but later put him at odds with the progressive members of City Council (I will go into some details below). Now apparently there have been continuing incidents, culminating in the events of New Years. That is when, after the Mayor’s last possible minute veto of the prevailing wage bill, Doug Shields called an emergency meeting of Council. I suspect any Pittsburgher who reads this blog knows Pat Dowd protested the calling of the meeting, refused to participate (to give the needed sixth vote to overturn the Mayor’s veto) and ended up complaining loudly. The historian with a doctorate ended up calling the other members of Council present “fascists”.

So what is Dr. Dowd’s motivation for this behavior? Is he just a contrarian or might there be some other reason. I don’t know the answer, but there have been some ideas nagging at the back of my mind for some time. The first time Dr. Dowd did something that seemed counter productive was after he filed suit involving the LED billboard. He had hired his own lawyer, but at the last possible moment Shields, Peduto, Kraus and I believe Burgess filed their own lawsuit (essentially trying to join Dowd, and also showing the Mayor that a majority of Council opposed his actions). But when they tried to use City funds to pay for the lawyer they hired, Dr Dowd objected. His point was that Council had not asked for a preliminary vote prior to hiring the lawyer to authorize the expense. Now, I don’t remember why those members of Council waited until the last possible moment to hire the lawyer and file the suit. One possibility is they were surprised by Dr Dowd’s move. They may not have had time to take a preliminary vote, but never the less there is one inescapable fact: Dr Dowd is actually right, at least in a technical sense. Should it matter that the Council might not have had time to take that preliminary vote?

Let’s look at a more clear cut example, the New Year’s Eve veto by the Mayor and the emergency meeting called by Doug Shields. Now these events occur about a year and a half since the LED billboard affair, and Dr Dowd has had conflicts with other Council members and ran against the Mayor in last year’s primary. When the Mayor vetoed the prevailing wage bill on New Year’s Eve, he achieved an interesting tactical victory. By vetoing it then, that particular bill could not have it’s veto over-ridden, since it was after business hours, and the Council that had previously passed the bill (unanimously) would not exist the next day.

However, before going on I want to point out that the Mayor’s was only tactical (small scale) and more importantly, temporary. The new Council is actually likely to be more inclined to pass a prevailing wage bill. But an angry Doug Shields decided to try to over ride the Mayor’s veto anyway, and called the emergency meeting. Except that actually he couldn’t legally call an emergency meeting without 24 hours notice. People like Bob Mayo, Chris Potter and Bram Reichbaum examined the issue, and I believe the consensus (at least between Mayo and Potter) was that the Council’s own rules and the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act were violated. Perhaps Council could have also voted to waive its own rules, but probably not a State law. Maybe the unusual nature of the situation would have been enough that the meeting and the over riding of the veto (had it been accomplished) would have survived a legal challenge. But once again Pat Dowd felt that what Council was doing wrong and refused to participate. This was the point where he tweeted that this was how the fascists had seized power. In fact I suspect he is somewhat wrong in that assessment, but he is correct that the emergency meeting was a technical violation of rules.

Now, I am of the opinion that there are rules and then there are rules. Personally I think the rules of a court of law are in some ways more important the procedures for a legislative body (I say that knowing I risk being accused of possibly allowing the fascists in). The procedures for an American court of law balance the need of allowing both sides to make their case with the needs of the system to protect future defendants’ rights. But legislative rules evolve to make the system as fair as possible, give the public access but also sometimes allow deliberation in secret, and generally promote orderly proceedings. Still, the Mayor has demonstrated that the system in Pittsburgh can be manipulated, that Council’s will can be thwarted. On at least two occasions, a fraction of Council decided to side step its own rules, but only in response to something the Mayor did. Was Council’s breaking its own rules justified on those occasions? I believe it was.

But I can see the other side of the argument. Perhaps when the Mayor does something that breaks rules is the time when Council needs to hold itself to a higher standard. Perhaps that’s the point Dr Dowd has been trying to make.

If so, if that was his intention, he has not been very successful, in my opinion. He has apparently gotten angry in Council sessions, and even heckled during the New Year’s Eve meeting. That is not behavior that demonstrates principle. It does indicate passion, but I am not sure our City Council needs more passion.

I still consider Dr Dowd to be a very intelligent man. He may or may not be the smartest person on City Council, but whether he is or not, he is certainly smart enough to be a tremendous asset to Council (he is, after all, the most educated). However, when he feels Council is breaking its own rules, he needs to find a way to say that and then I think he should quietly say he can’t participate in meetings he thinks are illegal and walk away. People might fault him for doing that, but at least he would be able to command some respect for exercising his principles in a dignified manner.

Can we handle the truth?

Jack Kelly reminds me of the movies in the Dirty Harry series after the first, but before they got really silly (you know, when he got the even bigger hand cannon or was chased by a radio controlled toy car). There was often a sense that criminals manipulated the system with ease, and even if they did go to prison it was like going to a resort. Now, I will admit that money affects everything, so in the past and even still some criminals did have such good legal defenses as to escape justice, while (as we now know) innocent men were sent to prison for crimes they didn’t commit, often because of out and out racism (that’s something Kelly doesn’t mention).

I am referring, in all this, to a quote from today’s Kelly column “"Do you think that most Americans prefer that this guy is a) watching cable TV in a warm cell funded by taxpayers and enjoying his right to remain silent; or b) at an undisclosed location being waterboarded to learn about his little friends back in Yemen and their plans to kill us?" a friend asked Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard.” talking about Umar Abdulmutallab, the man who tried to blow up the Northwest Air flight on Christmas Day.

Of course, Kelly can escape any negative consequences for saying that because he is quoting a journalist who is quoting “a friend”. But I want to focus on another person’s quote in the Kelly column: “"Despite vast databases crammed with evidence, our leaders -- of both parties -- still refuse to connect Islamist terror with Islam," Lt. Col. Peters wrote.”

Kelly is just quoting, but he did choose the quote.

How many Americans actually know what Al Qaeda actually wants? My understanding is that they want the US to leave the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, they want the Middle East to be run by one government (a Caliphate) and they want Israel gone (probably destroyed)(http://www.infoplease.com/spot/al-qaeda-terrorism.html). When Iraq was attacking Iran, we supported him as a secular leader (bound to upset very devout Muslims). Our female personnel in Saudi Arabia have walked around in tank tops and shorts, driving and we have generally flaunted an ignorance of Islamic law. So I can see the idea of Al Qaeda wanting us out of the Middle East, although I think most Muslims are simply uncomfortable with our ignorant behavior. But to equate Islam with Islamist terror is like saying all Christians must believe the Earth is only 5000 years old.

I wonder how many people remember that the Nazi’s of Germany were initially an anti communist movement? That in the twenties and even more I think in the thirties communism was popular with the unions, and unions (and probably some of the ideology of communism) were popular with workers in thirties, who didn’t feel much sympathy from management. I am sure the various bosses were alarmed by communists, and so for a long time US foreign policy was at most neutral about the Nazi’s, if not a bit positive. It also puts Joe McCarthy in a somewhat different light (although by the fifties everyone involved were mostly disenchanted with communism). And by the way there is room for debate about how much the cold war was really about stopping the Soviets from taking over the world, or the Soviets trying to defend themselves from aggressive American “containment”.

My point is that Al Qaeda certainly hates us, would be happy to never see another American in the Middle East, but I think the idea that they want to see us destroyed is silly. Iran can not destroy us, much less a terrorist group of a few hundred (even if it is a few thousand people). Iran could hurt us, and hurt us more with nukes, obviously the same for Al Qaeda. But we could obviously pound Iran to dust if we wanted to, and we have been pounding on Al Qaeda for the last eight years (and change). I don’t know why we dropped the chance to get Osama Bin Laden in 2001 (except that if we had Bush would have lost his excuse to invade Iraq), but we still have fumblingly done a fair bit of damage to Al Qaeda.

Obviously Al Qaeda is still a threat to our country, but we need to remain clear about what kind of threat. Certainly Al Qaeda wants to hit visibility targets, preferably with lots of American casualties (particularly important ones) and they are unconcerned if a few Al Qaeda operatives die along the way. Really typical terrorist stuff actually. Could some downed airplanes and/or nerve gas in a subway really be terrible and painful? Absolutely. But could those acts destroy the US, destroy our way of life? I don’t think so, and put that way I am sure you agree. But like the US with the communists, the story conservatives want to tell us is more important than the reality that exists. Thus I guess Kelly’s choice of quotes.

I don’t think the Obama administration has done a great job with our defense against terrorists, but the mess left us by the Bush administration may be impossible to un-entangle ourselves from. It will be certainly impossible if we delude ourselves with the conservative silliness.

Big issues on a small scale ....

Traditionally the Republicans have been the party of business, at least supposedly. Actually, as far as I know the Republicans were born as an abolitionist party. But be that as it may, the stereotype is that Republicans were the party trying to protect the rights/wealth of the privileged. Republicans like to use the language of business and economics to advocate policies that favor the free market, and complain about policies that place restrictions on the market (either to address pollution/global warming or the economic issues of the poor or labor). Now, you would think that sometime in the eight years of the (second) Bush administration or at least in the four years when the Republicans had majorities in both houses of Congress and the White House, the Republicans would have taken steps to address economic issues. In fact, considering there was an announced goal to create a permanent Republican majority, and that Republicans claim that taking the government out of the free market and everyone (including the poor) will benefit, it is surprising that Republicans seemed to go in the opposite direction and expanded government spending. They made some cuts in social spending, cut revenue collection by lowering the taxes (mostly of the wealthy) and ran of course they were running a couple of occupations while borrowing to spend more and reward everyone’s constituents (particularly those of Republican congress persons). But not the supply side revolution we might have expected.

So, again, again, why not? Republicans and conservatives (including conservative bloggers and on-line commenters) tell us that only if government would leave the market alone, life would be better even for our poorest. Yet when they had the opportunity to actually implement these ideas, they failed to move forward. No courage of their convictions? Or perhaps despite the fact the speak the words, they have no idea what the actual theories are? At least Reagan did some tax trimming, some of which might have even been targeted according to supply side principles. Of course, we may lay some of our current problems in the financial sector (and perhaps others in government) at Reagan’s feet.

Now this debate is being played out once again, in sort of miniature form, and mostly between liberal and conservative City Democrats. There are some suburban conservatives piping in and mostly taking the opportunity to tell the City that unless it wises up and starts oppressing African Americans and other poor City residents, the City will fall (further) into the economic abyss. But mostly it is progressives (and perhaps union leaders) advocating a prevailing wage and the Mayor (perhaps behaving true to form) complaining that such a policy will hurt development. To be fair, does he have a point?

Business getting money (a hundred thousand for most, thirty thousand for grocery stores) from the City would be expected to pay their employees whatever an average wage is within a particular geographic area for each particular job position. Does that disadvantage potential City developers so much as to assure their ventures will fail? If these potential developers need to offer lower wages to succeed, who will they hire? After all, to attract good employees, you need to offer a good wage. If you offer grocery store employees minimum wage, you will get only new employees, and those who were turned away from higher wage jobs. Of course, if you are locating businesses in disadvantaged neighborhoods, (the snide suburban Republicans say) all you will get in applicants are those who have never been hired or can’t be hired in the suburbs. The implication is that City businesses will only be able to sell to City residents (probably because of the inferior products they will sell) and because of the theft associated with City residents and the stupidity associated with City business people, will only survive if they pay poverty wages. Of course, that’s ok because we don’t really want the residents of poor City neighborhoods accumulating enough money to move to the suburbs.

Well, that might not be the Mayor’s articulated argument. In fact, I will be interested to hear the Mayor’s arguments. His 11th hour veto of the prevailing wage bill seemed clearly designed to tweak the noses of the current council. Yet I doubt he did himself or whatever cause he is trying to advance much good. If there are problems with such a bill (and I can see that there might be, although I believe several other cities have passed such laws), giving Council the opportunity to rewrite the bill might strengthen it against a court challenge. Ricky Burgess may have lost some support for the Council Presidency, mostly because of his connection to Pat Dowd. Dowd during his term has repeatedly chosen to take technically legally correct plans (such as saying his fellow Council members could not hire a lawyer during the whole LED billboard dust-up). But Dowd expresses these positions in a less than diplomatic manner. His argumentative style, frequently directed towards his fellow council persons (possibly more than towards the Mayor) have made him no one’s friend.

There’s talk that if Burgess doesn’t make it, and Peduto can not muster the votes to become President, maybe Theresa Kali-Smith will be advanced. I so far have seen no reason to think she would be anything but a puppet for the Mayor (Burgess similarly seems like he might be that too). I have also heard Kraus might be an option, and I suspect he might be a superior one. He has worked hard in his position, but he has acted diplomatically and made few enemies (except for those who naturally hate him for his sexual orientation). He may be the City’s best hope.

Meanwhile, just like with healthcare/insurance, there is no real debate on the economic effects of the prevailing wage bills, only shallow arguments from different ideologies, or perhaps just different political camps. The end seems inevitable, yet we may yet be surprised by the power Ravenstahl might yet wield.