AntiRust

Regional Government: The Cleveland Way

The Cleveland Plain Dealer just kicked off a series on efforts to consolidate government services and create a more "regional" leadership structure. Which should sound familiar. Lots of the same issues are at work here, so it's worth a look.

The Post-Gazette on Guns: Satire or Serious?

Post-Gazette Associate Editor Dan Simpson has penned a column about how to get guns off America's streets. It's bad. One of the worst things I have ever read. In fact, it is so bad, I wonder if it is some kind of satire. Seriously. I think he might actually be pro-gun. Or maybe... OK. Just read the whole thing yourself.

Suggestions include a $1,000 fine and prison time for anyone in possession of a gun. Random street searches for all citizens, including old ladies, and a heavily guarded government armories where hunters can store firearms until hunting season. And the kicker: "Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling and empty building."

Like I said, either it's the scariest bit of nonsense I have seen in years, or brilliant satire.

At any rate, do take a look. And read it with this in mind: In some form or another, all of these strategies have been tried. In the war on drugs. And thank god. Imagine of we lived in a society in which people had access to drugs.

The Steelers Have A New Mascot: Here's a Name for Him!

So the Steelers have a new mascot. They are looking for a name. Take a look. See what you think:

Can you think of any names? What about "Evan Marriott." Come on. You remember.

That's right. TV's beloved "Joe Millionaire." Seriously. I think it's him. And if I recall correctly, he was a construction worker before signing on to reality TV.

Perfect.

Although I am not sure if Pittsburgh can really get behind a mascot named "Evan." Perhaps if he changes his name to "Carl." Or, um... "Joe."

Snobs: What the Cool Kids Are Drinking

So what are the coolest restaruants in America serving to their customers?

Tap water. Seriously. But the article is about more than that. Class warfare. Environmentalism. All that good stuff. Check it out.

Who knew that beverages were so political?

More Details on Livability. And Some Questions.

The Post-Gazette has more here.

I was not actually living in Pittsburgh in 1985. So here's a question for anyone who has. How is the city better today? Worse? I have some ideas. But I thought I might check out some others before jumping in.

And now that it's been 12 hours or so and it's safer to be a bit more analytical, here's something I didn't know that sort of takes a little of the glow off the rankings:

Mr. Savageau said the rankings favor large metropolitan areas with history. Thus, none of the top 10 cities in the rankings are in the Sun Belt. Five are in the Northeast, and four are on the West Coast. The 10th-ranked city, Madison Wis., is in the upper Midwest.

"I guess they are somewhat subjective," he said of the ratings. "In a sense that I try to imagine what people ought to be looking for. Low housing costs and lack of crime and more things to do. I think people would agree that these are good, valid ways of measuring metropolitan areas."

Well, another way to gauge what people are looking for is to look where people are going. And a lot of people are going to the Sun Belt. For various reasons. But it seems to me that whether or not people are actually choosing to live somewhere says a lot about a place's livability. I agree that "history" is important. And most people would agree that it is. But apparently it is less important than some other factors. 

Pittsburgh! America's Most Livable City! Again!

Gosh. I remember when Pittsburgh was named America's Most Livable City way back when. And now, it has happened again.

Congratulations, Pittsburgh. Seriously. I like this town.

And let me be the first to say it...

Can we move on now? Can we please, please, please stop obsessing about "image"? Can we please, please, please stop griping about the difficulty of overcoming the idea that Pittsburgh is choked in smoke and grit and all the rest? Can we stop coming up with new slogans to prove that we are all about tech and medicine and education? Can we just "be," and forget about reinventing who we are and what we think we are?

People know. OK?

But all that aside, do enjoy the place. Enjoy your cheap house and your short commute and your nice view and your neighborhood bar. Those are really important things. (Move to DC once. You'll see.) In the meantime, I am going to have to stop my wife's hyperventilating. She is convinced that Pittsburgh's weather ought to preclude it from anything higher than 500th on the list. She's a flatlander, though. So I forgive her.

In the meantime, I was toying with the idea of checking on Pittsburgh's population the year it last won this honor and comparing it to today. It would have taken about 30 seconds. But that seems overly grumpy and cynical. To hell with it.

Go Steelers!  And someone get me an Iron!

How to Give Young Professionals a Leg Up

People are always falling all over themselves to give young people a leg up. How best to do it?

This column from today's New York Observer offers everything you need to know. It is the final word on the subject. It is flawless.

Finally.

Build Big (Green) Stuff: Erie on the Rise?

Erie is gaga over a recent mention in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. And rightly so. Thomas "The World Is Flat" Friedman mentions that city's increasing profile in environmental circles. And get this: What makes Erie so "green" is its... manufacturing. Yep. The GE locomotive plant. Very cool. Here's a snippet:

John Dineen runs G.E. Transportation, which makes locomotives. His factory is in Erie, Pa., and employs 4,500 people. When it comes to the challenges from cheap labor markets, Dineen likes to say, “Our little town has trade surpluses with China and Mexico.”

Now how could that be? China makes locomotives that are 30 percent cheaper than G.E.’s, but it turns out that G.E.’s are the most energy efficient in the world, with the lowest emissions and best mileage per ton pulled — “and they don’t stop on the tracks,” Dineen added. So China is also buying from Erie — and so are Brazil, Mexico and Kazakhstan. What’s the secret? The China price.

“We made it very easy for them,” said Dineen. “By producing engines with lower emissions in the classic sense (NOx [nitrogen oxides]) and lower emissions in the future sense (CO2) and then coupling it with better fuel efficiency and reliability, we lowered the total life-cycle cost.”

The West can’t impose its climate or pollution standards on China, Dineen explained, but when a company like G.E. makes an engine that gets great mileage, cuts pollution and, by the way, emits less CO2, China will be a buyer. “If we were just trying to export lower-emission units, and they did not have the fuel benefits, we would lose,” Dineen said. “But when green is made green — improved fuel economies coupled with emissions reductions — we see very quick adoption rates.”

Yes, Virginia. You can still build huge stuff in Pennsylvania.

Sweet!

Suburban Versus Urban: The Blurring Continues

Wow. This has been underway for years. Decades, even. But check out the details of Washington, DC's $2-billion "National Harbor" project:

Four hotels, three office buildings, three residential buildings, five restaurants and 4,500 parking spaces are well underway.

And it's more than just a convention center and all the rest. There appears to be some sort of cosmopolitan sensibility at work.

Milt Peterson looks upon the artist renderings of National Harbor with the critical eye of a general. It's like nothing Washington has ever seen.

Sail-shaped banners line the Potomac waterfront, with moving images projected on the fabric. A retractable, 42-foot video screen stretches between two masts for outdoor movies. Stonehenge-like boulders alternate with larger-than-life bronze statues along the promenade leading to the water. In his mind's eye, Peterson sees concerts, sailboat races, sunset cruises, fireworks, maybe even water ballet.

The main focal point will be a 70-foot statue called "The Awakening." Other public art includes two stainless-steel eagle sculptures that cost $700,000. Each.

But here's the thing. This project is not, actually, in Washington, DC. It's in the suburbs of Washington, DC. In Prince George's County, MD.

Interesting.

Welcome to the Machine: Pittsburgh, Politics and Immigration

Today's Post-Gazette has some really top-shelf reporting and analysis from Bill Toland and Dan Fitzpatrick. And by "top shelf," I mean that it basically falls in line with what I already think. (Strange how that works, no?) Both stories deal with the complexities of "growth," the vagaries of "attracting immigrants," and all the rest.

Toland's piece deals with immigration. Or the lack of it. So what to do about that? Would a stadium cure what ails us? A convention center? A blue-ribbon panel? A panel of young people? Actualy, no one really knows. 

It's possible that the puzzle is unsolvable for Pittsburgh. Because policies and networking efforts designed to recruit immigrants to urban area are still relatively young, research on whether it works or not is scant. The truth may be that political and business leaders don't have any real ability to substantially affect immigration inflow.

The best answer, according to the article, seems to be the most obvious: jobs. But it's complicated. So read the whole thing.

And speaking of jobs, Fitzpatrick reports that Pittsburgh's development gurus no longer quantify how many jobs they want to create because... well... sometimes the plans don't work out. And if you use numbers, people can tell.

Ask about the new strategy, and it sounds like a return to business basics. "The regional agenda is to promote our strengths and remove our barriers to growth," said Kathryn Klaber, the Allegheny Conference's executive vice president of competitiveness. "I think we are looking at the areas where we can have control."

To the conference, that means lobbying the state to lower the corporate net income tax, the second highest in the country. It means trying to bring about a consolidation of city and county governments as a way of making the public sector more efficient.

This is bad news, I think, for people who believe in salvation through ribbon-cutting. A stadium! A team! A skyscraper! OK. Sure. Those are all nice things. But real progress is a good deal less sexy than all that. Unfortunately, "slow and steady" doesn't play all that well on pamphlets and billboards. And politicians like pamphlets and billboards. Hell, Luke Ravenstahl is falling all over himself to get his name attached to a former porn theater.

Memo to Pittsburgh politicians: This is a machine city. And you are running the machine. Relax. You'll get reelected. So... you know. Try to stop wasting so much money.