Respect the dog

I was very happy with the way The Pitt News edited this column. It can be seen in a print-ready version here. Enjoy the column.

It’s not unusual for me to use the half-page my editors grant me each week to rip Pittsburgh City Council’s half-baked plans and mediocre legislative abilities.

And I was about to do the same thing this week. In the midst of financial peril, struggles to keep jobs in the city and the city government’s constant inability to understand its young constituents, Council decided on Tuesday to officially recognize a dog — Xante, the golden retriever.

In discovering this, it became my hope that Xante would perhaps be nominated to replace Council President Darlene Harris. That would be progress at least.

But unfortunately, we would have no such luck. However, the canine compatriot still deserves plenty of recognition, perhaps even a good ear scratching.

Why? Because he’s going to work, no longer going to welfare dog living off the kibble and belly rubs of society.

Raised by Joan Ardisson the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s assistant to editor-in-chief John Robinson Block, Xante has served as the paper’s spokesdog for almost a year, integral in the paper’s “Puppy Cam” video blog series. In that time, he has garnered a following with Post-Gazette readers and more than 1,300 friends on Facebook. However, Ardisson’s primary purpose in adopting the lab holds much more significance.

Xante was bred to be a Seeing Eye dog for the blind, and in what will surely be a bittersweet moment, he’ll be shipping out to Morristown, N.J. to start training for the next phase of his life in helping lend a pair of eyes to those in need pretty soon.

I support this wagging creature’s endeavors. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a dog person.

And while more of these columns have been written with a cat on my lap, rubbing itself into my face until I sneeze uncontrollably during the times when I’ve gone to visit my family than having the same occur with my late dog, it should be noted that my dog was the size of a small house. Also — and not coincidentally — Nestle, the makers of Purina dog food, took a tumble on the stock market shortly after she passed away early last year.

Having her sit on my lap would have been next to impossible.

But that’s beside the point. Dogs really are man’s best friend.

They wag their tails senselessly, annoy the heck out of you when you’re upset until you can’t help but feel better and will even try their best to do simple chores around the house like fetching a beer out of the fridge.

Apparently, this wasn’t always the case, though. Last week, archaeologists in Jordan discovered the remains of foxes buried with humans from 16,500 years ago, suggesting they used to be the pet of choice. The next-oldest remains of dogs buried with human counterparts were found to be from 4,000 years later.

Fortunately, evolution of man growing from a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer with his faithful hunting companion has continued long beyond the point of necessity, benefitting both the humans and animals. I’m just waiting for a letter from Westboro Baptist Church disputing that.

Evolution has made sure we now have helpers like Xante to assist those will likely never read this since I don’t believe The Pitt News publishes an edition for the blind. Unfortunately, no Seeing Eye dog I know of is fluent in speaking English to its owner yet, but after seeing the movie “Up,” I’m not so sure that the concept is too far from reality.

Nonetheless and perhaps most significantly illustrated by the Post-Gazette’s chronicling of Xante’s story is just how much a dog can benefit society. It’s not just with handicapped people, either.

Because admit it, after the Super Bowl last weekend, you tuned into the Puppy Bowl you saved on Tivo to make yourself feel a little better. Either that or you viewed clips from it after you got tired of watching the commercial with Darth Vader’s Mini Me starting a Volkswagen with The Force.

After checking it out, I can confidently report that the first half of the Puppy Bowl was far more entertaining than that of the Steelers-Packers game. And Puppy Bowl MVP Big Red played a better game than Big Ben — not a tough task to accomplish.

More than 8.6 million people tuned into the contest of canines last year, according to CNN, with numbers increasing every year. That’s almost twice as many as the Nielsen’s figure from the 2011 State of the Union address.

What does all of this mean? It means that there’s an appeal for the altruistic nature of dogs.

It means that Xante should be praised for being the caliber of dog that will likely commit the rest of his life to serving others. It means Ardisson should also receive commendation for her work with helping the dog adjust to life around humans.

And, lastly, it means that, yes, City Council deserves at least some recognition for once for praising this very special creature. As the saying goes, the sun will shine on a dog’s rear end every once in awhile. Even Council’s.

Answer of the day

For those of you who actually read my column in the paper, I promised that I’d reveal why my family is mostly rooting for the Packers this weekend: They’re from Ohio. They’d rather stick skewers up their noses to grill shish kabobs over an open flame on them than root for the Steelers. They’ll perpetually root for the Browns on some misbegotten sense of loyalty just because they can. The Browns weren’t terrible this year — unlike the Cavs — but they were nothing to write home about, either. Oh well, their losses…

But them’s the facts.

I, on the other hand, live in the ‘Burgh, and I’m sticking with the home team.

Thanks for checking out my blog. Leave some feedback, even if it’s just philosophical ranting. Go ahead, make my February.

Don’t forget your roots

The Pitt News version of this column be seen here. This one has changes made especially for my blog.

“Yinz aren’t from around here, are ya?” someone had asked me at a bar last weekend.

I’m used to people asking me about my heritage upon taking notice of my large-ish nose or curly mop of hair when I go without for while without a trip to the barber, wrong as it may be to stereotype. But, like Spider-Man facing impending peril, this stranger could somehow sense my lack of Pittsburghiness, more perceptive than most.

Then again, most Pittsburghers are. They can smell sociological differences as if they were bloodhounds.

After living here for five years, I had felt as though I had begun to adopt some of the culture. When I go back to visit my family back in Ohio, I notice my speech is a little more slurred than theirs, my pronunciation of hard consonants is a little softer, a little more ‘Burghy.

Heck, a few years ago, I even transferred my driver’s license to Pennsylvania. For both legal and residential purposes, Pittsburgh has become my home.

While a former editor of this newspaper once joked snarkily that I couldn’t write a piece without referencing my native state, I have only done so to compare the asinine legalities of this city and state to those of its western neighbor’s because it served beacon of rationality for me. In all other aspects, however, it wasn’t my home anymore.

In moving on with my life, I didn’t want much more to do with Ohio other than stopping for a few days here and there to visit my family.

Fast forward to two weeks ago when I got a chance to catch up a good friend of mine here — another educational pilgrim from the Buckeye State — for the first time in a while. The topic of sensibilities across state lines came up in conversation.

We had surmised three general categories of Pennsylvanians exist — yinzers and pseudo East Coast elitists take to the cultural extremes, and a happy medium fills the spaces in between. In particular, my friend pointed out her issues with meeting people here, many of which she found to have been a trifle more stuffy and arrogant than she had expected.

Somehow in talking to her for a while, I began feeling sentimental about my home state, my memories, perhaps from realizing how much simpler life was before coming to the cusp of independence from the vice grips we know as  formal education.

Last semester, one of my professors asked students around the classroom why they had chosen to attend Pitt. When she got to me, I simply responded, “Because it’s not in Ohio.”

And to a certain extent, I wasn’t just throwing out a quippy one-liner to get a few laughs. I chose to come here to challenge myself, to step back from anything and anyone I had ever known to see if I could start over and find success out of my elements.

Pitt seemed different enough from the bedroom community I had always known in Ohio. I know that some people go to college to hang around their old high school buddies while they have the supposedly best four years of their lives, but I considered that a pathetic excuse, an indirect way of saying “I fear change.” I would never want to routinely run into people from high school here in college.

Five years and a mound of debt later, I feel I made the right decision. But a funny thing has happened during the last one.

Over the summer during the last span of time I had something resembling a social life, I hosted a few parties at my apartment here. Yes, it’s true that I used to have a sense of fun.

I made sure to invite a few friends from home — all of them over 21 for the record. I realized that I was having more fun with people from my little swatch of Ohio than I had had in a long time — even after four years of infrequent contact.

It gave me an appreciation for something I had grown apart from: my roots. Perhaps, it was from remembering fun times like dropping a transmission out of a Nissan 240SX after my senior year of high school at 4 a.m. in my friend’s garage or the various Starbucks runs, but as much as I had initially wanted to all but ditch my first 18 years of my life, I couldn’t.

The more I reflected on those years, the more they seemed better than I had thought — aging like wine or George W. Bush’s presidency. Perhaps, it just took some time to come to grips with them.

Relatedly, at the beginning of the year I had written a piece reflecting on the plight of the fifth-year senior, balancing professional prowess against a thinning pool of friends still in college. Now in my last semester, I’ve begun buckling down for a change of pace once again.

I’ve begun cultivating the friendships I have here and focusing in on whatever may come next. I’ve tried to catch up with the people who have made college fantastic, thanking them as the curtain falls and the music cues up between now and the next 12 short weeks.

If I’ve learned anything between now and then, it’s that as much as changing your name and starting anew in a big city sounds compelling, it’s not altogether practical. While bits and pieces of that sound are bound to happen anyway with life’s progression, it’s important to remember the path you took to get there.

Obscenities without citation now possible in Pa.

Disclaimer: This version of a column that ran in The Pitt News on Jan. 13, 2011 has all of the fun language put back into it. If you’re not a fan of that, read the print edition here.

It all began in 1988. That’s the year when rap supergroup N.W.A. released the song “Fuck tha Police,” an anthem a lot of us likely mentally tune in to when we’re pulled over for speeding tickets, handed citations after a weekend of misfortune or happen to be on the wrong side of domestic abuse arrests and allegations as some former Pitt football players and employees happen to be.

While it serves as a great coping mechanism, using the phrase aloud in a cop’s presence has traditionally become a good way to get a few scowls, an increased fine or even a beating if your name just happened to be Rodney King in 1992.

But a lot has happened since the track’s release. Former Vice President Dan Quayle has stopped publicly decrying the moral decay of America.

And former N.W.A. rapper Ice Cube moved from Compton to Hollywood, forgoing gangsta life in favor of starring in family movies like “Are we there yet?”

Most importantly, however, is that, unlike last century, it’s finally legal to utter “Fuck the police” or any other vulgarity one can string together without repercussion. As of Jan. 4, State Police can no longer cite anyone for the use of profanity.

Because of the case against Commissioner Frank Pawlowski and the Pennsylvania State Police, Luzerne County resident Lona Scarpa got her $300 back that she had paid after reporting to a police officer about a motorcyclist who swerved at her. During the investigation, it became known that she called the driver the colloquial term for a donkey’s rear end.

Also, her lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union won $17,500 for the prosecution in the name of free speech. It turns out her case wasn’t an isolated occurrence.

Over the past year, Pennsylvania police has issued more than 700 disorderly conduct citations for swearing, according to the Associated Press. Similarly, the ACLU found that Pittsburgh had written up 188 similar tickets over the past 32 months.

In some cases, people were arrested and thrown in jail for disorderly conduct charges or failure to pay the fines for what they may have deemed ludicrous.

Circumstances for the citations ranged from the aforementioned road rage to more mundane events like when a woman swore at her overflowing toilet. The state awarded her $19,000 for unjustly ticketing her potty mouth.

The biggest award recently comes by way of Pittsburgh’s City Council approving a $50,000 settlement loss in Nov. 2009 after a motorist let his middle finger do the talking. In retrospect, doing something like that during the G-20 would have helped a good deal with paying my tuition. Oh well.

Nevertheless, all of this signals a strong shift towards promoting the First Amendment. While detractors may see it as a free pass for rudeness, it isn’t.

A policeman doesn’t have to give a break to a speeder who claims to have not seen any “fucking” speed limit. And according to ACLU lawyer Mary Catherine Roper, who worked on the case, the ruling shouldn’t promote aggression, either.

“If somebody’s making a threat, or pushing and shoving and fighting, that’s a different thing,” she said. “But if people are cursing each other, you can’t issue a criminal citation and subject them to hundreds of dollars in fees for bad manners.”

Roper also said it will help ensure greater efficiency in policing.

“Besides being a waste of police resources, these types of citations are often used by police to ‘punish’ people who argue with them,” she said in an ACLU press release.

I hesitate to side with an obnoxious motorist who may be badmouthing a police officer simply doing his or her job, but I do think it’s necessary to demonstrate a proper respect for the law from all parties. And as far I know, cussing has never been illegal.

Police forces statewide will address the settlement through revising training programs and further refining the definition of “obscene.” They’ll include information about how to handle offensive gestures and language that doesn’t warrant further action.

In defense of those who may have been fined before this ruling, in the heat of a moment, verbal control isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind. People have a tendency to say things that they ordinarily wouldn’t say in front of their mothers during dinner.

Their cases will be subjected to review and possibly refunded. This case goes a long way towards rectifying what has occurred all too often — a violation of basic civil liberties.

While it may seem trivial, it’s not. While it may weaken police power a little, it goes a long way towards revitalizing the power of our rights.

To quote Founding Father Ben Franklin, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Perhaps because no officers have O.C. gassed me or shot rubber bullets in my general direction for some time now, I have no inclination to voice my dissent, but it’s nice to know I could do so now without reprimand. That’s how it should be.

How are Pittsburgh’s problems like a snowball?

This is the unedited version of my column featured in the Jan. 6, 2011 Pitt News. Click here for the school newspaper version.

Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. Even the Snowlocaust. Who would have thought such strong identifiers would have come as a result of some nimbostratus clouds producing a little precipitation?

Okay, perhaps a lot of precipitation.

Over the holidays, New York City found itself shrouded under 29 inches of accumulation, practically halting parts of the city that never sleeps. The series of events that ensued from accusing the mayor of preferential treatment of various boroughs to special committees formed to investigate the city’s failings brought back some fond memories of the extended break that we had here last February.

It got me thinking: In recent years when Frosty the Vengeful Snowman has decided to take his rage out on some unassuming city, why has there been such a cataclysmic breakdown regarding fixing the problem appropriately?

Blame it on the budget. Following the 24 inches of snow we had over a two-day span last February, former columnist Giles Howard reported that Pittsburgh’s road salt budget for 2010 totaled $559,640 — a figure Pittsburgh City Council approved that cut salt expenditures by about $400,000 from 2009’s figure.

Additionally, Pittsburgh City Council 2011 budget projects show that expenditures will increase about $4 million. But chances are that figure doesn’t account for recuperating for any of the prior year’s lost winter maintenance budget.

But why would it?

Pittsburgh’s legislators have had to devote all of their resources to solving a $1 billion pension crisis, lest the city find itself under state control. A piddly slush fund for snow plows and salt almost seems trivial by comparison.

Struck with an unexpected cost burden last winter, Pittsburgh didn’t allow enough of its budget keeping the roads drivable. Not to say I didn’t enjoy my Winter Break Part II, but there were times when I wondered if the city would ever dig out Oakland.

To compensate for the extra costs associated with plowing and salting the city then, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl petitioned the state via FEMA — the wonderful organization that so promptly cleaned New Orleans in the wake of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina — for emergency funds. Fast-forward to May, and City Council was still grilling civil servants on what they could have done better to prevent the city’s snow blunders.

It was a noble afterthought to make the city’s politicians look as they cared. Good for them. What they should have done, however, was give the whole matter a little more foresight. Fortunately this year, at least Pittsburgh has issued mailings with emergency snow weather plans in them to apartments and homes around the city.

But much like Ravenstahl last year, New York’s Michael Bloomberg committed many of the same sorts of blunders in December — a late response, not bringing on any privately owned plows to expedite the cleanup effort, poor planning and no strong leadership from any city officials. It didn’t help that, like Ravenstahl, Bloomberg was also nowhere to be found when emergency struck.

Regarding our handy-dandy mayor’s situation specifically, it turned out that he found himself stranded at the Laurel Highlands — a ski resort — during the snowfall and his 30th birthday. Interestingly enough, the mayor has had plenty of all-weather transportation at his disposal in the past, such as the GMC Yukon SUV paid for by the Department of Homeland Security that he used to go to a Toby Keith concert back in 2007.

It would have been nice if Ravenstahl found the same sort of ride back to Pittsburgh when it counted.

With the recent weather and the city’s priorities, it brings up a valid question as to what will happen this year if another incident were to happen. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 16 years had passed between Snowpocalypse and the city’s last great snowfall on Jan. 4, 1994.

If we were to ignore the early onset of northeastern snow storms, a yinzer might tell you that 16 years seems like a good span of time to plan before the city sees another large-scale storm. Why plan ahead?

It’s that same mentality that has gotten Pittsburgh where it is today in many other respects, now finally purged of its stall tactics to put up more debt to keep old pension debt afloat — a practice that dates back to 1998 when the city retired $66 million of debt just to simultaneously issue five new municipal bonds totaling $403.8 million, according to the Tribune-Review.

This city prides itself with living on half-cocked plans, its officials looking the part in suits and ties but really never grasping the true meaning of the tasks at hand, much less a semblance of planning in advance. It’s not so much of a personnel issue as it is a mentality issue, as the several of the faces have changed over the years, but mindsets haven’t.

During the last hours of 2010, Council passed a resolution that would reallocate $736 million in parking taxes to the pension fund over the next 31 years — another stopgap rather than a fix. For the plan to work, Ravenstahl and Council must also cut $13 million in spending — something they’ve never been good at doing.

With recent infighting between this city’s politicians, it ought to be interesting to see how they handle the city’s funding together. Whether something as seemingly simple as snow or as complex as ensuring financial stability for future leaders of this city, they’ve demonstrated little in the way of real skill at knowing what’s best for Pittsburgh.

Yet, as the years change, our snow disaster becoming a memory left behind in 2010, unless a state-run shakeup provides a swift kick in the posteriors of our officials, I predict the forecast to remain the same: showers of heavy snow at times surrounded by consistent storms of legislative incompetence.

Stop the wussification of America

Full disclosure: This originally ran in the Dec. 2, 2010 Pitt News. It can be seen here. This version has some additional content. Enjoy.

After last week’s food-induced coma and the action movie marathon that began with the cult classic “Shogun Assassin,” my oldest brother went on a rant concerning perhaps the most controversial topic facing the United States: the BCS college football poll.

No offense to our government or the TSA, but far more controversy lies in ranking our nation’s college football teams. While the Pitt football team has once again found a way to make a $25 season ticket worthless, there’s still plenty of reason to mention the BCS.

My brother graduated from a university whose president recently made some remarks concerning non-conference teams gaining a berth into the national championship game. In his interview, Ohio State’s president, Gordon Gee, said that schools like TCU and Boise State shouldn’t play in title games because of their weaker schedules.

The same could be said for any football team in the Big East, but that’s not the point of this column. Nor is my point to talk too much about sports. Leave that to the guys a few pages down from here.

Gee’s comments have sparked a litany of response from people who have said his remarks were inappropriate. But perhaps those offended should reflect on the situation with a bit wider perspective.

Gee did nothing wrong. He defended the rigors of the Big Ten conference and took onus in the fact that he believes in his university’s strength as one of the best — as any university head should in a similar situation.

While I’m a believer in Teddy Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick” philosophy, Gee illustrated the proper occasion to ignore it. Call it smack talk, boasting or just good ol’ fashioned fightin’ words, it’s a necessary part of our culture. And there needs to be more of it.

We’ve become a society of wusses, pansies and pacifists. There’s nothing wrong with turning the other cheek when the situation calls for it, but we do it routinely anymore. Then again, we’re trained to.

When I was in first grade, my teacher had a policy of letting her students figure out how to spell words phonetically. However words sounded, spelling them like that would be perfectly acceptable. She called it “creative spelling.”

During my parents’ conference with her, she explained that she wanted to teach impressionable kids with how to explore for themselves and all of that wishy-washy garbage. My mom and dad said that the only way they wanted me to learn how to spell was the right way.

Their conference didn’t last much longer than that, as my parents were shown the door. Four years later, I successfully defended the school of hard knocks by winning Clearmount Elementary’s spelling bee in front of her and everyone else there.

But the wussification of America has spread a great deal since first grade in 1994. I blame much of it on the same premise — the notion of socializing outcomes, of telling everyone that they are special. It’s why college and universities around the country have become degree factories, diluting the value of upper-tier institutions.

It’s why welfare programs are no longer frowned upon in the same light as they were decades ago. And it’s why we have institutions that give people titles like “senior executive vice president” instead of something you or I would understand.

We’re afraid of making people feel un-special.

The converse of this notion, of course, is one of cultivating diversity for diversity’s sake, where everyone is handed the same opportunity and is expected to have similar results at the end. The unfortunate fact is, though, people are not equal and they shouldn’t be treated like they are, either.

Kate Windsor, headmistress of Miss Porter’s School, an upper-crust boarding school, said as much in a July 2009 Vanity Fair article.

“The idea of a structure of hierarchy or power has been really dismissed in our culture as being not part of the American way or the American Dream: ‘We can all do, we can all be and we’re all successful,’” she said. “If you have kids and they play soccer, everybody gets the banner. It doesn’t matter if you lose — sometimes you think, ‘Did we even win?’”

Therein lies a great paradox: Had the U.S. been founded on the today’s “everyone’s a winner” values, it wouldn’t have been founded. Our forefathers would have given up and asked Britain if we could to just get along, perhaps group hug with King George and the royal court.

Now, it seems as though our spirit of competition has become diluted. President Barack Obama has even suggested that the U.S. is burdened with an arduous task of being the world’s premier superpower “whether we like it or not.”

It’s that propagation of extreme pacifism that has ultimately led to such a sentiment, and it’ll eventually lead to downfall through apathy if it’s allowed to continue. This country has always been guided under the principles of rugged individualism, innovation, leadership and, yes, swagger.

Getting along with everyone is noble. But in reality, the best thing we can do for this country is walk into our respective classrooms and workplaces with the belief that we’re each better than the people around us. Then, we should each go out and prove it.

Pittsburgh to ban strip club…but why?

Full disclosure: This piece was originally intended for publication in the University of Pittsburgh’s student newspaper last week. It was published in the Friday edition, November 19. The edited version can be seen here.

Pittsburgh’s City Council has proposed a legal injunction on plans to build a new strip club in South Side, and I’m utterly confused why.

According to the Post-Gazette, lawyers representing Pittsburgh asked three Commonwealth judges to overturn plans to build Club Marquise, a 5,000-square-foot gentlemen’s club on West Carson Street straddled between Station Square and what I like to call Little Jersey Shore.

It turns out the lot where the club is planned to be built on sits right next to the Onala Club, a center for recovering addicts. Keeping abreast of the area, it’s also on a stretch of road that had 150 accidents on it between 2003 and 2007.

Ordinarily, I’d say these reasons are valid enough to grind Club Marquise to a halt. But they don’t bare the whole story.

According to WTAE, the city planning commission passed a 9-0 ruling against Marquise Investments in 2008, yet its effect was titular at best. City Council was supposed to hold a hold a public hearing before submitting the final paperwork and with the decision, but it never did.

After the city had danced around with the paperwork for a few months, the investment group appealed the decision. Soon after, good fortune fell the investment group’s lap, with zoning already approved for the venue.

Commonwealth Judge Mary Hanna Leavitt questioned whether the Onala Club should carry enough clout that its presence dictate how other businesses in the area should run, according to the Post-Gazette. She also said operating times between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. shouldn’t affect traffic too much, either.

As the battle of whether or not to implant such a business continues within the legal system, I’d like to suggest that having another strip club in the area would likely do much more good than harm.

Joe Panzino, the executive director for the Onala Club, said in an interview with the Post-Gazette that he could “name you half a dozen people right now who, within [the strip club’s] first month, will be lapsed.”

“The environment of recovery would be totally compromised,” he said.

Yet, there’s no guarantee the strip club would even have a champagne room, much less alcohol in general. Such matters would likely become tied up for years in throngs of bureaucracy provided by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

It should also be noted that on the corner of Murray and Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill, a Curves gym sits in the immediate vicinity of a Coldstone Creamery and Dozen Cupcakes bakery. The city hasn’t asked for the removal of those two establishments yet.

Additionally, the Onala Club runs as many as six alcoholics anonymous meetings per day, with sessions starting at 7 a.m. and ending well after 10 p.m. Outside of a rehab clinic, no other organization operates with such a schedule.

Being aware of the surroundings, it would be more irresponsible for them to run that late knowing that its patients suffer from severe addictions than anything else. If patients wanted to go to bars or strip clubs, it’s not like they’re too hard to find on Carson Street or Downtown anyway.

And those already have liquor licenses.

What Club Marquise would guarantee with its presence, however, would be more jobs in the city. From construction workers renovating the dilapidated former medical office to the women performing in it, the club would create more tax revenue.

It’s not like Pittsburgh is new to mass opposition of supposedly sinful activities, either. Last year when Rivers Casino opened, protesters claimed that it would lead to widespread gambling addictions, crime and prostitution.

None of that panned out. What did, however, was the creation of approximately 1,000 new jobs, according to the Tribune-Review. On a much smaller scale, this will likely do the same. Strippers have to pay rent and tuition like everyone else, and this will likely facilitate it.

Moreover, it will benefit the city, too, supplementing the tax base that will, in part, fill the severely underfunded city pension fund. Since the city will need to stuff its metaphorical g-string with $91 million by 2016 lest it face a Harrisburg takeover, I don’t think government officials should be worrying how its tax dollars get there as long as it’s legal.

I know this city has a selective set of Puritan values its citizens and representatives choose to employ when it’s convenient. I’ve lived here for five years — it’s hard to ignore.

But a government’s purpose is to do what’s best for the greatest good of its people. Many of the 1,600 people who go to the Onala Club likely won’t be affected, as the club caters to services beyond alcohol treatment like hard substance abuse. And they probably won’t be there during the strip club’s open hours.

However, this city faces a very real chance of a state takeover. Its “Most Livable City” status could also be in jeopardy, as a large-scale restructuring could cut the benefits lifelong Pittsburghers have enjoyed for decades.

So being perfectly practical, it’d probably be in the city’s best interests to forget about cutting off Marquise Investments and make generating more revenue top priority because the state government is not the kind of sugar daddy this city would want to have.

Revelations from un-boozing

Disclosure: The Pitt News did a fantastic job editing this for print. It can be found here. They left out some stuff I really liked, though, so I decided to add a little more back for my blog post, speaking that it’s not limited for space. So sit back and enjoy.

There’s a lot of boozing in college. That’s a fact.

Even my fellow Pitt News columnist Katie Azzara touched on the significance of drinking last week in her column when she discussed transitioning into the bar scene as a new 21-year-old. Speaking from experience, I can say that being of legal drinking age changes everything.

With the exception of a few holidays and smaller house parties, when most people turn 21, they don’t turn back. Even with the incurred costs that are well above those of the average weekend house-party scene, those of us who are able to barhop usually keep on blowing cash on a weekly basis.

Bars essentially become to college students what churches were to communities before the 18th century: hubs for congregation. The big difference is that churches didn’t quite lend themselves to being spots to pick up one-night stands.

For many legal drinkers in college, it would be difficult to imagine living in sobriety for an extended period of time  — it’d be equivalent to having a primary social activity eliminated. Or at least that’s what I thought before I had to do it.

Following recommendations from a few doctors, my family and my inflamed liver, I realized I had to take it easy for a month while I recovered from a rather unexpected bout with mononucleosis.

At first, I tried to compensate for my inability to drink. I went to a bar only to order a ginger ale, trying to feel comfortable. But that really wasn’t possible.

When your friend — under the influence of alcohol, of course — mentions to everyone you’re being a “pansy” for the night, feeling a sense of comfort  becomes difficult. It didn’t help that this friend also told the entire crowd I had mono.

I might as well have had the bubonic plague, or that’s at least how I felt by the time he was done. So after two hours of feeling like an outcast, I left that bar to meet up with some other, generally more pleasant friends.

There, I switched to root beer. But when I ordered my drink, it took a few moments for the bartender to process the idea that I wasn’t having alcohol.

Each instance had its own moments of awkwardness. Since then, I’ve opted out of going to bars for as long as anything alcoholic other than mouthwash has been verboten to me.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to figure out what a senior in college does when he can’t go to the weekend watering hole. To my surprise, Pitt Student Health Service’s most recent statistics report that more than half of the student body has experience with heavy drinking. According to the 2006 survey, 51 percent of Pitt students drank five or more drinks in one sitting within the last two weeks before the survey was conducted.

As part of the minority of Pitt students during some parts of my freshman year, I used to go to Friday Nite Improvs at the Cathedral. Everyone I went with has since graduated, however, so I didn’t have any friends to go with during my mono-induced drinking hiatus.

Instead, I went to the casino once and watched college football with some friends another time during my four-week (and soon-to-be five-week) break. It was probably a good thing, however, as if I weren’t sick, Pitt’s football team likely would have driven me to drinking.

Otherwise, I spent my weekends watching movies and updating my resumé. I wouldn’t call it particularly exciting, but it was a good change of pace.

The whole experience will culminate this weekend (Well, no, not anymore…), when I should be able to grab the handle of vodka I’ve had sitting in my fridge collecting dust for a month. But the results of what changed from a month of social isolation into an experiment in sobriety have me in awe.

On average, before mono, I would spend $20 to $30 on a single night’s bar crawl, not including the obligatory $5 pizza. With that money no longer tied up in testing the functionality of my liver, I have had extra cash to budget on eating out and other goods I had put off getting — like my Halloween costume.

I could also get started on work earlier on Sundays without having to shake off any residual effects from the prior night’s activities. To paraphrase Ferris Bueller, if you have the means to try out a stint of sobriety, I highly recommend it.

But most of us who drink don’t. A good time often consists of going out with friends, loosening up and having fun, with alcohol acting as the primary social lubricant. If you’re not drinking, you’re not having fun, or so we’re conditioned to think.

As a designated driver in the past, I’ve asked bartenders to put Sprite into a cocktail glass so it would look like a gin and tonic. It has certainly made life easier at times, especially when I’ve run into people I went to high school with who have asked me about my drink of choice.

If my dry experiment has taught me nothing else, though, it has taught me restraint. Whereas drinking used to be about getting “shwasted,” soon after my 21st birthday, it turned into a key for weekend enjoyment.

But now after not imbibing for my longest stretch since turning legal, the lack of alcohol has given me an appreciation for moderation. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing, considering excessive weekend forays in drinking will only be fashionable for graduating seniors like myself for another six months.

After then, it’s called alcoholism.

Banning in-car texting? Not likely

Full disclosure: This is the unedited version of the column that ran in the Oct. 7, 2010 Pitt News. It’s getting scary that I can say here that not much was changed. They did a good job with it. But this version has the luxury of not having to be edited for space. See if you can spot the differences, though. It can be found here.

At the end of Pennsylvania’s 2009-10 session, house Democrats are rushing to push through legislation to ban texting while driving. The problem is, though, they may be causing more harm than good.

Published by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety last week, a research report conducted by the Highway Loss Data Institute sister organization concluded that of four states that recently passing texting bans, none of them saw reductions in accidents.

In fact, they all saw increased insurance claims for collisions, with Washington recording nine percent more accidents.

Adrian Lund, the president of both HLDI and the IIHS, said in the report that, “[Lawmakers are] focusing on a single manifestation of distracted driving and banning it. This ignores the endless sources of distraction and relies on banning one source or another to solve the whole problem.”

But her remarks are going largely ignored as Democrats struggle to get a bill to Gov. Ed Rendell by next month. Some of the more vocal supporters of the bill include Rep. Joseph F. Markosek of Alle, Rep. Eugene A. DePasquale and Josh Shapiro — perhaps the bill’s most outspoken backer.

Shapiro said the results proved inconclusive at best and deceptive at worst.

In an interview with the Philadelphia Inquire, Shapiro cited statistics about accidents involving hands-free versus handheld phones. His statistics showed in 2009, just 479 accidents occurred involving the former while 8,014 involved drivers using at least one hand to hold a phone.

There’s no denying that distractions increase the rate accidents occur, including cell phones. Shapiro said, “This clearly demonstrates that limiting hand held cell phone use limits the number of crashes.”
That’s flat-out deceiving in its own right. In making his own apples-to-oranges comparison, he ignores both the relatively limited number of people who own wireless headsets as well a separation between text- and call-related accidents.

However, banning texting while driving through government-imposed nannying isn’t going to curtail drivers doing it. Like underage drinking in college, people who want to do it are going to do it anyway.

Where Shapiro or anyone in agreement with his perspective ultimately comes up short-sighted is in realizing the consequences of banning in-car texting. Perhaps best illustrated by the HDLI study, drivers in states banning the practice are just lowering phones out of view to avoid a ticket.

So instead of looking up at a raised phone on the steering wheel, the states with increased accidents — including California, Louisiana, Minnesota and Washington in this study — probably have drivers looking down in their laps to fiddle with their fingers and phones.

Additionally, there are too many loopholes in this bill to make it effective. From GPS programming in a phone to finding a number, § 3316 in the bill has enough gaps in it to really make it seriously questionable as to whether this legislation could even be enforced.

But as long as it all looks morally responsible in the eyes of safety trolls to ensure the public welfare, politicians should be able to get good nights of sleep knowing that they made potentially deadly decisions that look responsible.

I don’t text while I drive. I’ve found that I can’t. I drive a car with three pedals on the floor and a row-it-yourself transmission. If I do text in my car, it’s done at a red light.

Even when I owned an automatic car that freed up my hand and foot, I still didn’t. But then again, I enjoy driving and I realize I share the road with cars that would crush mine in an accident, so I practice defensive driving.

Rather than issue reactive legislation to slap motorists on the wrist for using a phone, possibly in urgent situations, politicians should try to be proactive for once. After all, driving is a responsibility — not a right.

In Germany, for instance, a driver’s license can cost the equivalent of more than $2,000, according to The German Way website. Germans also have much more difficult driving tests in addition to basic vehicle maintenance and first aid classes to get certified. Both theory and in-car tests are much tougher, too.

Those requirements sound a bit rigorous, but they make sense in a country that has no speed limits in many areas. In the U.S., we’re conditioned to think of driving as a necessary evil to get from A to B, so we try to multitask to pass the time.

Germany frontloads its driving requirements to weed out drivers, and perhaps we should, too. One part of the pending state driving legislation I agree with would mandate 65 hours of in-car training for junior drivers versus the current level of 50.

Additionally, states should mandate required high-speed defensive driving and maneuverability courses and tougher written tests. Because, let’s face it, do any of us really trust any other drivers on the roads, much less in Pittsburgh?

As of Dec. 2009, the IIHS reported there were 286 million wireless phone subscriptions outstanding in the U.S. — up from 194 million in June 2005. As we become more wired, that number will likely go up further. Our governments should have better things to do than go all Big Brother on the drivers carrying those phones.

Instead, we should focus on making drivers safer before they get on the road. Or a far easier solution would be to just outlaw the automatic transmission.

Time to ditch unions? Perhaps

Full disclosure: I was very happy with the version of this story that ran in The Pitt News on September 28, 2010. It can be found here. For a slightly less edited version, read below.

As much as President Barack Obama touts the American worker, the strength of unions and living wages for everyone, it’s time to face the facts and realize that if that’s the American dream, it’s no longer going to make it out of the REM cycle.

In enduring the recession, it looks like American people are finished with letting others skim off the top or get handouts for work worth less than the sum of its parts. Last week, autoworkers at the Jefferson North Chrysler plant outside of Detroit turned in a tip that their peers were drinking and getting stoned during their lunch break.

Following a WJBK Detroit undercover investigation, 15 employees were suspended indefinitely without pay. Thirteen of them got canned this week as a result, and two were sent on a month-long unpaid vacation. In July when touring the plant where they worked, President Obama said he’d “bet on the American worker any day of the week.”

I’m glad he would, but I wouldn’t. While this is an isolated incident that occurred with just a few of the 2,500 workers, it presents an ugly angle of freshly bailed-out blue collar workers taking advantage of taxpayer dollars and exploiting just how little attentiveness or skill is needed to adequately perform job paying as much as $77 an hour.

During the financial meltdown, Chrysler received $10.8 billion in federal aid, as well as backing from Italian automaker Fiat. That allowed 50,000 Chrysler employees to keep working.

Through aggressive negotiations, the United Auto Workers, the body representing 390,000 American manufacturing workers, made sure its members received high pay and pensions for tasks as simple as installing door panels. New hires started at $28 an hour before benefits until 2007.

After that, contracts for new hires were renegotiated to pre-benefit earnings of $14 an hour, creating a two-tier system of employees doing the same work but some for half-off. That still might be too much money for too little work.

In the wake of the recession and subsequent shedding of 431,000 automotive jobs in 2008, according to Vice President Joe Biden, we figured out that many of our businesses could get along with leaner, more efficient and cheaper production.

Simple lessons in good ol’ business school suggest that the primary way to create profit is to create value, i.e. to make a desirable product that costs customers more than what it cost to make. You can’t do that when a leech attaches itself to your business and commands whatever price it wants for unskilled labor.

While unions have existed in the U.S. since the 1700s, their prominence in the manufacturing industry didn’t emerge until the Great Depression. The Wagner Act of 1935 solidified unions by giving collective bargaining rights to union members through the establishment of the National Labor Relations Board.

Further laws went into effect over the next few decades that solidified workers’ rights, and with each new bill passed and each relatively prosperous era, unions gained strength.

Over time with a combination of subsequent labor rights laws passed that applied to every legal worker in the U.S. With further globalization, the American union worker began losing its prestige. Unions became an unnecessary anachronism of a time that once was and never will be again.

This recent trend doesn’t just apply to the manufacturing industry. Unions in many other sectors have had the same effect on our economy.

Earlier this month, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie hosted a town hall meeting where a school teacher attacked his policy that cut pay raises, forced staff cuts and displaced compensation the teacher believed she deserved. Christie responded that he asked for a 1.5 percent contribution to medical benefits and a one-year pay freeze only to meet a teachers union that opposed any sort of concession.

“The teacher’s union made a decision,” he said. “They’d rather stand by their current contracts and make no compromise despite our awful economic circumstances, and they allowed members to be laid off.

There would not have been anywhere near the amount of layoffs if a pay freeze was taken.”

Having to justify cuts to balance an $11 billion budget deficit at town hall meeting while facing a similarly hostile crowd last May, Christie said, “Unlike the United States of America, the State of New Jersey can’t print money.”

Our economy is based around supply and demand. Jobs that demand more money than what they’re worth have already begun declining, and they’re going to decline more.

Whether the manufacturing industry — where many non-union workers make living wages in right-to-work states — education or any other industry promulgating union ideals, it has become necessary to review whether the necessity of a union in the workplace is doing more harm than good.

Unions aren’t evil. They’ve bolstered the American worker to greater heights than they would have otherwise during eras of corruption.

But in many subsectors of our economy, the truth is they’re no longer necessary. And in many cases, they’ve actually become the same sort of forceful, unyielding monoliths they were originally designed to thwart.