Tonight's Episode: "Brain Pain" or "Taxing your Knowledge"

So by now, you've heard about this:

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl plans to propose a 1 percent college-education privilege tax to council today, in a move that's likely to set off a fight with the city's schools of higher learning.

College and university representatives met with the mayor on Wednesday and argued against the tax, which would be assessed on a college student's tuition. It technically would not be a levy on the students or their schools, but rather on the privilege of getting a higher education in Pittsburgh.

A ballsy move for the kicker from Washington & Jefferson College, I must say. Now, the administration is saying that they're using this as a way to bridge the gap in lieu of the Pittsburgh Public Service Fund from local non-profits, but I know better. This is political retribution.

You see, back in 2008, a whole shit load of young, college people registered to vote for Obama and most of them chose to be registered in Oakland. Of course, these are your rank-and-file Democrats we're talking about: they're generally leftish folk, who have more in common with professors in Squirrel Hill than (say) a courier service account manager from the North Side. Based on a report from Pitt's University Center for Pulling Numbers Out of My Butt (UCPNOMB), these kids voted overwhelming against Ravenstahl last week. If these trend continue, you're just going to have more and more "smart" people that don't know their damned place and vote the party ticket, already. That has to be stopped.

Why would Ravenstahl throw this tax on students, other than punishing them for voting for -- God help them -- Bill Peduto? Simple, really: in four years (or seven if you're still working on your PhD in Sociology because you're friggin' thesis advisor won't even meet with you anymore as she's on "sabbatical" down at Cappy's every night -- stupid tenure) you're going to vote in maybe one election. In four years, it's going to be a different crew of students who won't notice that their $40,000/year bill has gone up another $400.

And it's not like CMU's going to up and move to California, or Australia, or Qatar or something, amiright?

Still, it's a pretty shifty thing to do after we spent the last four months trumpeting our commitment to "Eds and Meds" in front of the world. Lord knows that if the City started taking a big bite out of union benefits, the Mayor would have been taped upside down to a flag pole with his underwear glued to his head.

Actually, I think CMU has a robot that can do that; Lukey better not venture past Craig Street.