Thanks Senate!

The Pittsburgh Trib has a nifty breakdown of the House bill versus the Senate bill. To bring around the stimulus bill to semi-local issues:

First, the Senate decided to remove $25 BILLION in state grants from the stimulus package.

No state block grants = higher state taxes.

But it's okay because we'll all get a $1,000 per couple tax credit for the next 2 years. Don't worry, if you phase out of the tax credit (at a combined income of $140,000), there's a loop-hole for you. The Senate also decided to add a fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax. "The change would save a family of four an average of $2,300." Glad to see we're focused on who needs the money during this recession. How about you save a family of four who's making under $150,000 per year $2,300??? Between those 2 tidbits, we've got $210 BILLION of the stimulus. The Senate and House are ignoring that Bush's stimulus checks did almost nothing to help the economy and the people are not clamoring for a check.

The people were actually excited about the prospect of a major infrastructure investment. The Senate decided to chop out $43 BILLION for rail and general public infrastructure repairs. They leave the infrastructure component at about $55 BILLION or about 6.5% of the package.

But wait, there's also lots of money for energy.

The Senate thought energy was so important they added $11 BILLION to that area. Maybe we'll see some of that trickle down to $25 Million for Pittsburgh LED street lights? Fat chance. Instead the extra money is divided out like this: $4.6 BILLION for fossil fuel research and development; $6.4 BILLION to clean up nuclear weapons production sites.

The Senate also decided to sneak in an auto-makers bailout by allowing folks to deduct interest on their auto loans as well as extending tax benefits to companies losing money. Another $16 BILLION down the drain there. And they'll give all of us a $15,000 coupon if you buy a house in 2009. Except in Pittsburgh where most houses cost less than $150,000 so we'll only get 10%. Another $35 BILLION there.

All in all. This "stimulus" is a gigantic mess that is mostly managing to alienate the American people from their overlords in the House and Senate. With $838 BILLION to play with, you'd think they could manage to please someone. Instead, the Democrats appear to be setting the stage for a major Republican come-back in 2 years.

Of course, at least all this money is being spent in the USA. And I'd rather have a deficit based on spending and tax cuts that benefit my family rather than spending the staggering trillions of dollars on destroying and rebuilding Iraq.

Cleveburgh vs Pittsland

This weekend, I roughly followed the dated 36 hours in Cleveland piece by the New York Times with some yelp help thrown in. I was drawn to the inevitable comparisons between the two struggling rust belt cities. Looking for the city's equivalent of Primanti Brothers left me stuffed at Cleveland's kitschy and charming Sokolowski's.

Oakland = University Circle a little further from downtown but more accessible via RTA
Bloomfield = Little Italy with less Thai food more Italian food
Tremont = a trimmed down Shady Side
Ohio's City's awesome West Side Market = our beloved Strip District
The Flats = Station Square

Deserted downtown = deserted downtown

My first impression of Cleveland in spite of the dirty piles of snow (they get about 20% more snow than Pittsburgh) was very positive. It reminded me of a European city with its wide boulevards, grandiose statuary, and classically styled buildings from the Convention Center to the Library.

The highlights of the weekend were definitely the West Side Market and the Great Lakes Brewery. The West Side Market is another European addition to Cleveland - a giant hall with everything for sale from bratwurst to pierogies to chicken gizzards to cannolis. The Great Lakes Brewery and Bar is an outstanding ambassador of the city. Not only is the beer great, they give hilarious tours of their eco-friendly brewery and have a packed-to-the-gills bar all adjacent to the West Side Market.





As rock music is not my biggest interest (and the $22 price tag a big deterrent), I steered clear of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Instead the Cleveland Museum of Art was a nice cap to my weekend. It's currently under an ambitious re-construction plan with only half of the galleries open to visitors - the rest re-open in June, but you can still check out their crazy collection of medieval armor and swords.

Things we can learn from Cleveland?

• Better bus shelters and bus lanes. They have special lights for their bus lanes which give them an edge over normal motorists. They have bus shelters that remind you more of getting on a light-rail line than anything else.
• Use light-rail judiciously to connect important places. They don't have a large light rail system, but it does connect downtown to the west side to university circle. They also connect their airport directly to a mall downtown which contains a hotel. How sweet is that?
  
• More city hotels - no visitor to the city should have to stay in Greentree unless they really really want to.
• Our own market - we even have the South Side Market House - invite regional butchers, bakers, and farmers to sell their wares in the winter months. Pittsburgh has an eating and cooking culture that can support multiple foodie-areas and being able to step inside the market on a cold day is a wonderful respite.
• More cheap parking - almost every downtown parking lot had super-cheap weekend rates - not just the ones owned by the city of Cleveland.
  

Things Cleveland can learn from Pittsburgh?

• More cohesive neighborhoods. Perhaps this can only come with time, but the only time I really felt I was in a full-fledged neighborhood was in the quaint Little Italy. Everything else just seemed a little too piece-meal - like our currently evolving Penn Ave district.
• A better alternative city paper. Our City Paper blows their Scene out of the water. I understand they have more pages to fill in the live music department but their Scene doesn't talk about politics at all. After the Short List, my favorite part of the City Paper is their off-beat take on local politics.
  
• More ethnic variation - aside from European offerings there was a dearth of international options at the West Side Market. Considering that Cleveland has 7 times the Hispanic population of Pittsburgh, I was disappointed to see only 1 booth of the 180 booths of the West Side Market selling tortillas. The Strip in Pittsburgh is a treasure trove with its Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European stores.
• More reasonable restaurants. Cleveland has PLENTY of over-priced hoity-toity food and a fair share of super-cheap college eats, but not enough in-between. Without my pre-trip yelp research, I would have been lost for a reasonable dinner in the city.
• Less Blight. Pittsburgh has its fair share of blight in certain areas but on the main route between University Circle and Downtown, there were more abandoned buildings than I could shake a stick at. It would greatly improve a visitor's first impression of Cleveland if some of those eyesores were demolished. How about turning mid-town into a nice big green space filled with cross-country skiing, biking and walking trails?
  

Overall, I had a great weekend in Cleveland. If you haven't been there, hop in your car and drive the scant 2 1/2 hours next weekend. As one Browns fan told me: "You have the Steelers, but we have Great Lakes [brewery]."

Breaking News

What a quiet post-Super Bowl week it's been. The big news item was the hard-hitting
exposé that the Steelers celebratory parade being paid for by the taxpayers - just like every other parade in the city.

Also, Pitt may expel some couch-burning bus-shelter destroying Steelers fanatics. Good for them.

And the NFL has cracked down on local awesome t-shirt makers Commonwealth Press. Hopefully you picked up your Tomlin "Yes We Can" shirt before it went contraband. The black-market value of that shirt has now sky-rocketed.

Mr Chief Executive woke up from his Super Bowl hangover today to intervene on behalf of an airport sculpture. Phew. That's why we pay him the big bucks. Now, there's no fear of the airport ever operating in the black. I expect Mr Mayor will recover some time mid-March.

How I Love Taxes

Trying to cut costs at the state level? How about this one? Charge inmates for toilet paper and soap.

Next, maybe state employees can pay for their toilet paper, too? And how about charging people $10 when they have jury duty? While we're at it, let's get rid of those pesky free defendant's attorneys.

Personally, I believe that if our society creates criminals then we need to pay for their attempted rehabilitation. While they may get free books in prison, they do not get a college education. When they leave prison, they should not be in debt for their years of servitude. They'll have a hard enough time finding a job.

If you want to be innovative with the budget, how about the criminals monitor the new legalized video gambling machines? We can pay them 72 cents per day for staring at the computer. While we're at it, let's take Pgh Comet's suggestion and legalize table gambling at the casinos to get them off our backs about video poker. Though I think Las Vegas has proved time and again that gambling addicts can support however many slots machines you give them.

While we're at it, why don't we legalize some drugs that the inmates can package up for us, and we can tax them?

And how did the tobacco lobbyists pull this one off? Only state in the nation with no tax on chewing tobacco and one of the few with no tax on cigars? Heck, my tobacco-naive self was under the impression that cigars were basically cigarettes and that the two were taxed equivalently. Silly me.

Seriously, Mr Rendell, I don't care how you make the money, just as long as you don't introduce the 10% 2009 Emergency Budget-Filling Tax on alcohol that stays on the books for the next hundred years. How's Johnstown doing these days?

Heads In The Sand

I expect that the small-town folks in West Virginia have their heads in the sand and can pretend that their sweet little hometown teenagers haven't heard about S-E-X yet. If they really feel the need to envision that their precious darlings would never do that, don't watch TV, and that all parents will tell their kids "when the time is right," let them. They can also move school districts when their baby gets pregnant or get an abortion under the table.

But in Pittsburgh??? Where 14% of births are by women under the age of 20??? What do they think? Every one of those girls had sex just once with her long-term boyfriend and was really unlucky???

It's criminal to be teaching these kids abstinence-only education.

The biggest reason? STDs.

If a teenage girl gets pregnant, it's unfortunate and it's a burden on the system and it's another girl who will never go to college and be working 3 jobs to support her single-mom kids. That's unfortunate.

But if she gets a disease because her boyfriend said: "It's just a blowjob you don't need a condom." Or: "I'll pull out, baby." Or: "I promise I've never been with anyone." That's just willful neglect. That's criminal in my mind.

Of course, if it was me, I'd take it a step further. I'd give out the birth control pill in high school and packs of condoms. I'd introduce baby-prevention classes - teaching those girls that babies are a huge responsibility and that they can do a lot more in life than just have kids. And those kids will have a better life if they can hold off a few years. Most importantly, I'd offer free STD testing just like over at Club Pittsburgh. I'd have STD-awareness fairs. I'd make sure these kids know the dangers and the responsibility.

But luckily for you, there are moderates and conservatives amongst you that will prevent all that from happening. Instead, they're fighting for "abstinence-plus." Don't you worry, there will be no icky condoms involved. But it's a start.

Black & Gold Profits

If you're in business in Pittsburgh and you did not make a boat-load of extra money over the weekend, you need to re-work your strategy.

Every bar on the South Side was packed starting at 12pm on Sunday. By the end of the night, I'm sure there were some 5-figure tabs.

I stopped at 3 stores on Monday before finding a copy of the Post-Gazette, after enduring almost unbearable loading times on the newspaper's website. One day they'll find a way to effectively cash in on website hits and double all their writer's salaries.

Dick's Sporting Goods re-opened its 13 area stores immediately following the Super Bowl and sold out of most gear. People stopped to buy clothing on the way home from their partying - or maybe as a stop in the partying process?

If you're a coffee shop downtown, stop reading. You should be peddling your hot cocoa and steaming cups of joe on the street today to those 250,000 freezing fans waiting for the parade.

Or you can be sentimental like Eat'n'Park and let your employees go watch the parade. But I'd recommend having already cashed in by selling Black & Gold cappuccinos for the past 3 weeks alongside your Steelers emblem cupcakes. Not everybody can have Smiley Cookies.

On Why I'm Hoarse

I headed down to the South Side to watch the game yesterday, camping out at a bar for 12 hours or so. This was my first Super Bowl in Pittsburgh, and I've never seen anything like it from gorilla suits to gold go-go boots to posing with the superstition-laden Steelers teddy bear. People at our tables came from as far-away as Youngstown, Rhode Island, New York, and "here."

In good news, I survived the drinking binge (with lots of pacing) and the after-party in the streets. I saw lots of cops in riot gear, but didn't have the opportunity to see them exercising their crowd dispersal skills. As far as I could tell, there was just intense good cheer and drunkenness.

In extra good news, contrary to previous reports, there will be a parade tomorrow.

In not-so-good news, the revelers set some fires and broke some windows. More than 100 were arrested last night. But I'm sure you all knew that.

See you at the parade! Let's try to leave the city standing.