Voter mashups
http://votermap.us/
one of several projects by CMU's Mattt Thompson.


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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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Think you’d rather ride out the recession in Charlotte than in Rust Belt cities such as Buffalo or Pittsburgh?
Think again.
Politics in Pittsburgh is like a family affair. If you read the Trib version (which does not mention the origins of the story in a Dennis Roddy PG piece) you see that McCullough was arraigned by District Justice, former City Council President and counterfactual mayor Gene Riccardi... think about it, he likely would be mayor today if he did not resign his City Council seat to become a district justice. and who is McCullough's attorney? Cliff Levine, local campaign organizer for the President. If I were to guess I would speculate Cliff would be on the short list the Prez would be taking advice from on who should get the local US Attorney's post. Who is on the obvious list for that post has to be Stephen Zappala, the Allegheny County District Attorney. Was the grand jury investigating this run out of the DA's offices? I dunno, but that would be my guess. It's just that some days you think we all live in Peyton Place.
If he does leave council before the end of his term... you would have the majority Democratic County Council responsible for filling an interim replacement for the seat which according to the County Home Rule charter would have to be filled by someone of the same party. That could be an interesting dynamic. I'm thinking, could Dave Tessitor register as a Republican just to be allowed to be appointed? Maybe it could be Mark Rauterkus' one chance to hold an elective office.
****Residential foreclosures in the Pittsburgh area dropped for the second year in a row in 2008, a 6.6 percent decline from 2007....What I don't get, I thought we knew this already? So what I said earlier is that it's not just one year's decline, but a 2nd year of decline. How many regions in the country have seen two straight years of decline in foreclosures? Compare the local numbers to the recent news from up the turnpike on record foreclosures in Ohio.. although it notes there are the first signs of decline in some of the hardest hit areas.
It might not be long before hotel rooms outnumber Pirates fans on the North Shore.
A Pittsburgh firm showing foreclosed properties to Chinese buyers?? Does that mean Pittsburgh properties? I assume it's for properties elsewhere, but anyone who sees buses full of Chinese tourists driving slowly through Homewood or some other local neighborhood, let me know. Not very long ago Chinese land ownership would have been either an oxymoron or just plain illegal for them. No matter where this is happening, that socialism thing in China must really be over.More than 100 buyers from China's ever-growing upper- and middle-class have gone on these tours in the last few months, according to Chen Hang, the China-born vice president of real estate at Fortune Group. The Pittsburgh-based company shows foreclosed property to Chinese buyers.
He’ll stay golden so long as he doesn’t make Grassroots organize an Easter Egg hunt!
The Junior World Championship came to a close today with the final event – the Team Competition – and the United States closed with a silver medal winning performance by its team of Robby Huerbin*, Kate Hansen and the doubles team of Trent Matheson and Taylor Morris. The trio stopped the clock with a total time of 2:26.116, just 0.315 seconds behind the gold medal winning German team of Julian Von Schleinitz, Madeleine Tueber, and the doubles team of Nico Walther and Nico Gruenneker, who crossed the line in 2:25.801. Third place went to the Russians.
We talk a lot about how local real estate here is faring compared to other regions. Might be a lesson that you can push those comparisons too far. It's always an extreme case to look at NYC, but just for fun here is an example of a 4 BR - 4,000 sq foot Condo (just a condo) in Manhattan with an asking price of $4.5 million.
Yet here in the resurgent Downtown Pittsburgh, what may be the best plot of real estate in the city other than the Point itself, with 3 acres of prime space to boot, the 16-story, 273,000 sq. foot State office building could not sell even for a nearly identical $4.5 million according to the news accounts today. $4.5 million? So even if you ignore the 3 acres of land, the value per square foot is nearly 70 times higher in NYC. Yeah, it's not the fairest of comparisons. Not really a meaningful comparison at all. The state office building is certainly described as a fixer upper for sure, but it still is an amazing location while that condo in NYC is probably in just a run of the mill Manhattan high rise. As they say: location location location.