The Sweet Smell of Compromise in the Morning

I've previously discussed the Pittsburgh School's policy on 50% being the "minimal" grade. I was pleased to see some different attitudes being used towards a failing school system, but I was concerned that the administration appeared to be largely just pissing off teachers. I'm happy to report back a few months later, that the administration did take teacher feedback into account and has adjusted their hard line. If students refuse to even do the work, they will get a zero. However, as long as they put in a "good faith effort", they will earn a baseline of a 50%.

If the school district continues to respond to teacher complaints with action, perhaps there is hope for Pittsburgh schools after all. That's something that the Mayor's office can learn, too.

UPDATE: The above-mentioned changes are effective immediately. However, next year, the school district is making a bold change and moving to a five-point scale, where students receive grades of 1 through 5. And as a result, they're doing away with F altogether?

Under the new scale, work scored from 4 to 5 will be an A, 3 to 3.99 a B, 2 to 2.99 a C, 1 to 1.99 a D, and zero to .99 an E.

Let's all cross our fingers and hope that this change was done with teacher input.

Beer - More and Less

While we're all waiting for the inevitable yet snails-paced opening of the Hofbrauhaus, delayed by the onset of the drink tax and the slow pace of public services, we can at least continue to frequent Penn Brewery. The North Side Leadership Conference showed reality to Penn Brewery's greedy landlords who were mistakenly under the impression that an official recession was the time to triple the rent and attract new big-budget renters. Now we can look forward to another 5 years of Penn Brewery at its current location. The beer is dead. Long live the beer.

Foundation of the Month

Love it or hate it, the Pittsburgh Promise now has the support of almost every major charitable foundation in Pittsburgh. The latest donation is $9 Million over 3 years from the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

In recent months, Promise gifts also have been pledged by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation ($2.5 million over five years); the Grable Foundation ($5 million over five years); The Heinz Endowments ($6 million over three years); Buhl Foundation ($3 million over 10 years); Pittsburgh Foundation ($10 million over about 10 years); and Massey Charitable Trust ($1 million).

Now that's an honor roll.

On top of that, Pittsburgh and other urban school districts nation-wide are slowly improving their "student achievement" (a nebulous term at best) relative to their suburban counterparts.

Back to Priorities

Like Obama listed his 3 priorities for the nation, I list my 3 major talking points on this blog: drinking, public transportation, and general political idiocy with a bit of my questionable morals thrown in to spice things up.

Back to the number one priority - drinking.

Pittsburgh is a drinking city. This guy chronicled bars in all 90 of our neighborhoods. We have a brewery in a church. Hofbrauhaus picked Pittsburgh as their 3rd location in the country. And from football games to art galleries, beer drinking goes with the territory. With proper precautions (i.e. drunk driving education and enforcement), I'm all for it.

For such a city, though, why do we put up with the yoke of the PLCB and the case law?

Oftentimes as a city we look to the East for inspiration. Is that it? We want to resemble the liberal state of Massachusetts (who historically didn't allow beer and liquor sales on Sunday) or Connecticut (who physically places tarps over the beer in grocery stores after 9pm and on Sundays ) or perhaps live-free-or-die New Hampshire (who runs a similar state-run liquor store plan yet somehow manages to have the cheapest prices in the region). If so, we need to start looking West to California, where if you want a bottle of vodka, you pick it up with your orange juice.

Do we really believe deep down inside that drinking is evil? And that we need the PLCB to protect us? After all the wording of the law which created the PLCB says the following:

This act shall be deemed an exercise of the police power of the Commonwealth for the protection of the public welfare, health, peace and morals of the people of the Commonwealth and to prohibit forever the open saloon, and all of the provisions of this act shall be liberally construed for the accomplishment of this purpose.

Or perhaps it's because our state continues to make money hand over fist because of the aforementioned slick setup? In this year of economic downturn, the only bright spot in the economy appears to be liquor sales. PLCB reported record sales last year. They're making so much money they've even hired an image consultant to make us like them more. Fat chance. Personally, I feel if the PLCB is going to pillage my wallet, they should at least turn their excess profits over to the state instead of working on their branding.

Is it really a surprise that when the state gave Pittsburgh options for funding Port Authority their only viable option was a drink tax? No. What's surprising is that we continue to put with it.

Fat Wednesday

While paczki are a foreign delight to me, the fish-on-fridays and 40-days-of-resolutions all leading up to chocolate-bunny-day are all very familiar to me and my very Catholic Massachusetts hometown. I met my first Jewish person in high school and was under the impression that Catholics were the vast majority of this country until college. Catholicism and I have since parted ways but I still have a soft spot for the various festivities it offers.

In light of being thankful that Jesus hallucinated in the desert for 40 days without food and water, I offer the following news articles that made my day.

1) Abstinence-only education in Pittsburgh schools has been eliminated. One can only hope that some of the millions that Obama is cutting out in his upcoming budget is the sickening Federal governments grants for nationwide abstinence-only education. Needless to say, I have strong feelings on this issue. This is not one of those fond memories of Catholicism for me.

2) The Mon Wharf re-construction actually begins very shortly. One more piece of the city's bike path puzzle is being worked on, and we are one step closer to having one of the most bad-ass city bike trail in the country.

3) Natural Gas prices have dropped for my local supplier. Every time I attempt to wrap my head around commodity charges and gas cost adjustments and distribution charges, my head hurts and some wonk says that it's all good because Pennsylvania gas companies aren't allowed to make a profit while my gas bill edges higher and natural gas prices plummet. This time it still hurts my head, but I double-checked my gas bill for the month, and my rate did actually drop to relatively close to what it was a year ago.

So today, I'm a content blogger - or at least this morning. Hopefully Luke and Onorato and all their friends and enemies can hold off on stupidity for the rest of the day or till Easter. Perhaps it can be their Lenten resolution? Is that too much to hope? Maybe then I can find something positive to say about Pittsburgh politics every day of Lent.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

There was a recent court case involving Wegmans cafe's selling beer in six-packs. For me, this paves the way to Giant Eagle one day selling a six-pack in a place where I dare to tread. Naturally, beer distributors are upset. They have the monopoly on reasonably priced beer. And by and large, they and their six-pack bar brethren rake in the dough without a thought of appealing to anyone with taste. I see ads on TV with scantily clad woman walking the aisles of concrete-floored walk-in garages lacking any semblance of heat or even warm lighting. They appeal to the common base who wants to walk in, cart out some cases of beer and leave. Currently, the homeless guy scraping together $10 in change to buy 8 oz Coors Light by the 24-pack seems more at home than I do. Most six-pack bars barely edge out in decency with their sticky floors, dim lighting and lack of windows. Now, Wegman wants to sell beer in "cafes." Why are they so far away?

And what do the beer distributors have to say about this landmark courtcase? "NOOOOOOO!!!!! We will fight you in court till the day you die!!!!"

I have a few alternative suggestions for these beer distributors.

1) How about you increase the appeal of your stores? If people want to shop at the beer distributor, they will continue to do so in spite of other options. Painting your garage door is not enough.

2) How about fighting for a tax break on cases of beer? It's often-times more reasonable (and always more convenient) for me to buy a beer at the bar than lug home a case. It's also cheaper to drive across the border to another state.

3) Better yet, how about fighting for the right to sell six-packs, even 12-packs? Then you could be an actual full-fledged store that could actually service well-rounded customers. Unless we revert to Puritan society, laws regarding alcohol will continue to get less and less strict. Things should get easier for businesses catering to this vice. Embrace that. It's not like you're selling cigarettes, which are the target of a public witchhunt.

The state of Pennsylvania's liquor laws encourages people to buy six-packs in bars as "travelers." That is sick. I welcome Wegman's to the beer distributor market and can only hope the laws continue to evolve. By the way, if you're not familiar with Why The PLCB Should Be Abolished, you've got some catching up to do. Go read. I echo his call to write to your local paper. The only way the PLCB and its ilk will be abolished is public outcry against it.

Or Why Councilors and Lawyers Don't Mix

Disappointed is an understatement for my opinion on County Councilor McCullough's fraud case. He allegedly spent tens of thousands of dollars of a 91 year old woman with dementia to use for his own political causes. This accusation was from April 2007 and the case was before a grand jury in October. Mr McCullough was actually elected to Council after this case was revealed.

This is pretty messed up. First, why did this case take so long to come to fruition? We're talking more than 18 months from the accusation to the arrest. Second, does this mean yet another special election? At what point will he be forced to resign in spite of being elected while the case was on-going?

Third, why did I have to like this potential crook? This is the only man who responded to my drink tax emails. This is the man who helped fight the legal battle that the drink tax collections are actually used for Port Authority. He is also the man who initially recommended lowering the drink tax to a reasonable percentage.

As 2 Political Junkies (and American law) says though, innocent until proven guilty. And at this rate, McCullough will be up for re-election before the case is finished.