at least they are over the super bowl...


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NullspacePittsburghers know that the times are out of joint. Somehow they're expecting the prosperity to blow up in their faces.
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The $247 million of variable-rate bonds are immediately going to be swapped to fixed rate, so the authority will know exactly what its debt service and swap payment obligations will be, DiMartini said. The deal will include a SIFMA swap for the tax-exempt portion, and a LIBOR swap will be used for the taxable portion, he said. "You're trying to find the balance between variable and fixed that gives you the lowest cost of borrowing," Conturo said.
Looking at that map, I wonder whether Somerset or Bedford County, either independently or together, are the biggest destinations of New York City trash in the country. New York turns out to to be the largest exporter while Pennsylvania is both the largest importer, and net importer of municipal solid waste. You may wonder why it's legal to dump your trash in somebody else's state, but the lawyers will tell you about this little thing called the Commerce Clause.
Sam had some insightful observations when I posted that map earlier . Someone ought to look into what the impacts, economic or otherwise, are of the trash economy in Kersey, PA which is the the largest location obvious in the northwestern part of the state.
Come to Pittsburgh is the message being sent to the workingmen throughout the world. Stay in Pittsburgh is the advice to those already here. From President A.C. Dinkey of the Carnegie Steel Company comes the latter counsel. He supplements it with a number of reasons why Pittsburgh at present is, and in the future will be, the best home in the world for the workingman.Notice they didn't say workingwomen back then.
""Why do we have to have 'coterminous, stakeholder engagement' when we could just 'talk to people' instead?"
Last week I put up a map of the last Altmire-Hart race for PA's 4th congressional district and a look at the history of PA's 18th congressional district. The PG's Jim O'Toole looks more broadly at the vulnerability of Republicans in Pennsylvania's congressional delegation and the Philly Inquirer looks at some Pennsylvania redistricting history. The story of post 2000 redistricting in Pennsylvania could be summarized as: never has so much money been spent for so little return. Another way to look at it: sometimes you can overquantify things. At least in this case, the supercrunchers got things backwards.
If you read the Philly story linked above, it focuses a bit on the migration (it's kind of a diaspora story unto itself) of State Senator Frank Pecora following the 1990 redistricting in Pennsylvania. To connect everthing, who was Frank Pecora's Chief of Staff?
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I have a long transit post building up in me, but there are so many things going on that it's hard to boil down to one post. But the Trib has coverage on the expenses involved in the operation of the Port Authority's light rail system, or "T". Maybe a bit of history is needed. See this great video from the KDKA archives reporting on the opening of the T in the 1980's. There is a brief interview with spry young Jim Roddey (actually he looks much the same) who was Chairman of the Port Authority during the T construction years. Something that might have been good to include in the Trib story is the map below. This is a map of public transit usage in Allegheny County. It's hard not to miss the big impact of the "T" on ridership along its mostly South Hills routes.
That shows the big bump up in younger, in fact of the youngest voters. Of course with percentages you get small number distortions when your denominators are so small, which is pretty much the case with voters under the age of 30, if not 40, in local elections. So interpret that graph as you will.
Is there something to make sense of here given all the caveats? Counting the number of voters does not allow you really figure out who was more likely to come out on election day. Especially around here, local demographics are so atypical that you get very different number of people in different age cohorts. So I have matched the voter turnout numbers used above to estimates I have on the population in the county in 2004 and in 2008.
What that gives me is the following graph which is the percentage of total population that actually voted, again by single year of age for Allegheny County in the two elections.
With that... I am not sure what it says in the end. Clearly the small number of younger voters in 2004 were given a big percentage bump up in 2008. I think it's much more interesting how many of the middle and older age voters came out. Nobody talked about that much, either during the run-up to the election nor even since. That spike in increased participation around age 27 in the 2008 primary is interesting and deserves some inspection. If I had to sum it up, I would say that the big increase in attention given the 2008 primary made the voter participation look much more like what is typical of a general election around here. What I think is probably the biggest question, and something I will look at when I have time, is whether the additional folks who voted 2008 were more likely to be the people who are likely to have come out in the general election anyway. Lots of younger voters come out in general elections even if they never make it to a primary. It makes a big difference if the folks who came out in the 2008 primary where those folks, or a lot of people really new to the political process and in the fall we can expect them to show up along with the folks who typically skip the primary, but make it to the general. The answer to that question across the country I bet will determine who wins in the fall is my call.
If you put both old and new districts on top of each other, you see just how much PA18 was changed. Granted, Pennsylvania lost a congressional seat in the last reapportionment as well, which forced changes across all of the state's congressional districts, but look at just how little overlap there is between what PA18 was and what it became. What this tells you is just how important the control of the redistricting process is. There is nothing more political than the drawing of political boundaries which can determine not only the party has an advantage, but what specific candidate is likely to do well.
Without reform in the process there is an interesting question as to how the post 2010 redistricting will play out in Pennsylvania. In 2001-2002, the Republicans controlled both house and senate in Pennsylvania and there was a Republican governor. That made control of the process straightforward if nothing else. Right now, the Republican party controls the state senate; the state house has a close Democratic majority, but with a Republican speaker reflecting a pretty even split. A Democratic governor is in office right now, but it will be Rendell's successor who is in office at the time of the next redistricting. So the control of Harrisburg will likely be about as muddled as it can get. Add it all up and it's hard to see how the the redistricting process will proceed smoothly. It's typical that there is some judicial play to the redistricting process, often in the form of lawsuits over the final maps that are drawn up. I would bet there will be involvement of the state supreme court far earlier in the process baring some extraordinary bipartisan cooperation in Harrisburg. Worth mentioning, the state Supreme Court right now is split 3-3 between D's and R's with one vacancy.
Think this is all too far down the road to think about. I have no doubt folks are plotting all this already and it will not be long before big bucks start to go into planning the next redistricting. The upcoming state elections are fundamentally important to who controls Harrisburg in the next few years and thus who will control the Federal redistricting that is coming up.
Governing has a column on viral video government. I think the meeting of the City's Cable Communications Advisory Committee last week was about as anti-viral as you can get.
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I had a link last week on this, but being overly abtruse I doubt anyone saw it.. but it's kind of important. Remember Pittsburgh is still sometimes considered the largest inland port in the US. That is a half-true kind of factoid, but I will leave that for another day. Suffice it to say there is a nautical industry here (think coal barges) and the Department of Transportation has a report out looking at how difficult it is hiring workers in the maritime industry.
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If you are reading because you saw my Sunday piece in the Post Gazette about the USS Pittsburgh and Typhoon Viper in World War II, you may be interested in my goal of bringing another WWII ship to Pittsburgh.
Some know that Pittsburgh was a major shipbuilding region during World War II when many local industries converted from their normal products. Pittsburgh would produce many of the amphibious Landing Ship Tank's (LST's) that were so vital on D-Day and many other operations during the war. I have a goal to bring one of them: LST 325 up to Pittsburgh for a visit from it current home in Evansville, Indiana. Evansville, like Pittsburgh, was a major shipyard during WWII. Most of the LST's built in WWII came from shipyards on the Ohio River. Time is running out for a generation, but I really think that some of the workforce that worked on these ships is still around and would enjoy the chance to see the product of their workmanship or in many cases their workwomanship as it was women who kept much of industrial American producing during the war.The first picture to the left is the launching of LST-750 launched in Pittsburgh on May 30, 1944 from the Dravo Shipyard. LST-750 would have a long glorious career and be sunk just 6 months later at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
I have previously blogged about LST-1 which was also built here in Pittsburgh. The second picture on the left shows LST-1 on local rivers soon after it was launched. When you consider how slow Pittsburgh industry was to change in the half centuries before and after WWII, it is strange to think that for the duration an entire shipbuilding industry was created, and later shut down, in mere months.
So that's the goal. How to make it happen? I have thus far not been very successful at finding an organization large enough, and with deep enough pockets, to sponsor the evolution. Any takers?