State of the Union Pre-Game

Back in heady days of my youth, I was involved in a group that regularly met to play cards, specifically a trick-taking card game similar to Bridge. This was a weekly occurrence, and several of us got quite good at the game.

I was, and I suppose still am, a fairly cautious card play: I refuse to bid unless I know that I can win my hand on my own, as I have no faith that my partner will be able to help me. This can be frustrating to my partners after the hand is played, as it is sometimes quite obvious that between the two of us, we could have won the hand had we tried.

There was one among our group, let's call him "Steve," who was, by far, the most ingenious player I've ever met. It was not rare for him to make an absurdly high bid, and still manage to eek out a victory, collecting all of his points. Steve would later go through a post-game analysis saying "well, I had this and this, and I assumed that you had this, and that the other guys had those, and I took a chance that this other card was in the discard pile..." and on-and-on until he proved to us that, no matter the quality of cards we had in our hands, he was going to win.

Steve was really, really good at cards.

Which brings me to the State of the Union. The way that I see it, Obama has a decent hand to play. It may not be a winning hand right now, but with some help from his partner, a little luck, and by being able to control the pace of the game, he could win big, like Steve. Unfortunately, he seems to view the hand that he has been dealt like me; sure I have a fist full of high cards in the trump suit, but because I can't guarantee a win I'm going to pass. In our little game, that means that the opposition gets more and more opportunities to score points as the hands drag on.

So what do I want to see from the State of the Union tonight? I want to see a President that knows that he can run the table, even if he's short one or two trump cards.

...And then starts to play that way.

A Bureaucrat's Aside Re: Baseball

Now that the Pirates have announced a new statue of Bill Mazeroski, does anyone have any ideas on how long it's going to take them to trade him for three minor league statues to be named later?

On the other hand, five more statues and they may be able to field an all-bronze team... which may actually break .500.

Night of the Living Wages

I had been kicking around another post about the prevailing wage brouhaha and just hadn't gotten around to it, so it seems Bram has beaten me to the punch and I suppose that gives me a good enough segue into beating a dead horse:

The debate over a prevailing wage ordinance was retread by the public in City Council today -- but the specific cons popular with the Trib and with some anonymous commenters here seemed conspicuously absent.

Dewitt Peart, president of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, told council he was "not stating an opposition to what you want to do, it's just how you went about it.

"We feel that the private sector was really not engaged to the extent that it should have to make sure that this legislation is the best that it could be," he said, asking for time to "review the legislation, so we don't have negative impact." (P-G, Rich Lord)

This bill was formally introduced two months ago, and had been in public circulation for far longer than that. You haven't reviewed it yet? Don't have anything concrete yet to offer? Just say you don't want folks in Pittsburgh who receive taxpayer subsidies to be made to pay their service workers at least the industry standard. That's an honest argument.

Well, to this point the answer is: those that are pushing this bill (*cough* SEIU *cough*) don't actually have a lot of answers about what this bill is going to do to development in the City. Sure, in a place like LA or NYC, you can implement this kind of legislation, but in a weak market City... well, who knows? The results of the legislation may be no jobs versus shitty jobs, and that doesn't help anything. Not to mention that no one out there can actually tell you what the "prevailing wage" of some of these job classifications are for the City. For all we know, this is a lot of huff and puff about nothing, but we don't know that yet.

And the second point: well, Patrick Dowd did offer a number of (never entertained) amendments to clarify the bill, which should be a modicum of evidence that the bill, as written, may have some *ahem* issues.

Moving on:

One councilor pointed out during last week's fracas that activating Living Wage, as it is now written, will require even small non-profits who do business with the city such as Just Harvest -- not to mention the city's seasonal youth life guards -- to greatly increase everybody's compensation to $24,000 per anum. It sounds like the old bill needs some deeper, concentrated work. Other members hold the view that scheduling a tentative vote not until Feb. 17 is a crime on par with the Holocaust.

And Bram sort of hits on the nub of the Living Wage bill: This is a bill designed to fail. See, on one hand you have a bill demanding that developers pay a prevailing wage; on the other, we have a bill demanding that the City pay a living wage. The arguments against the City paying the living wage are EXACTLY THE SAME as the arguments that the developers are using against the prevailing wage. The Living Wage bill is not meant to pass; it's supposed to a rebuke against anyone or any group who is saying "do as I say, not as I do."

But, hey: maybe maybe the Living Wage bill will in fact pass, only to have the State overseers striking it down later. Who knows?

Again, it's not that the opposition is actually opposed to anyone getting a Living or a Prevailing wage. It's just that no one has actually sat down and done the number crunching on the impact of these bills on jobs in the City. The only voice that's being heard right now is from SEIU (who, let's be fair, stands to gain immensely from its passage, not only here, but across the country) with no one really putting up data from the opposing side. One would think that between nine councilpersons we'd be able to assemble a half an economist, who could parse through all of the rhetoric.

Or is that asking too much of council?

An Important Announcement from the ADB

Dear Readers,

With today's ruling by the Supreme Court, it has now become financially feasible for me to seriously run for public office.

As you are probably well aware, my aspirations to become a powerful, feared member of the oligarchic elite have been stymied, partially because of those pictures of me and John Edwards' mistress, but mostly because the salary for an unsuccessful candidate is so poor. Indeed, as I have a wife and three kids to feed, I felt that I could not take the risk of running for higher office and lose, leaving my family destitute. We do have need for bare necessities (food, water, cable modem), and while the children would probably be tasty if they were slow cooked, I felt that the tradeoff was one I could not make.

Today's Supreme Court ruling, however, changes the game... and it's now an opportunity for you, the freedom of speech enabled citizenry, unions, or corporations to take advantage of me.

First, let me say that I have principles: valuable, deeply held principles that I will gladly abandon for cold, hard cash. You want an amendment to stop flag burning: for $5,000, I can be your candidate. You want to put electronic monitoring devices on liberals: for $5,000,000 I can be your candidate. You want to invade countries populated by brown people and forcibly convert them to Pepsi-Colaism... brother, for a mere $50,000,000 I can make that happen.

Of course, my real platform if totally up to you.

For a nice chunk of change I can be against gay marriage, but for a little bit more, I can be for it.
Don't like stop signs? For a generous contribution, neither do I?
Think that we need to drill baby seals in ANWR for their oil? A cool million from Exxon-Mobil would make me agree.
Want to waterboard people in contravention of the Geneva Convention? For a campaign plane, I'll hold the bucket for you.

I can be a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, a Tea-Bagger, a Trash Bagger, A Stinking Badger, or anything else your greedy little hands want me to be.

This is a great opportunity for democracy. Think of me as your, squishy, pliable, political Gumby whore, willing to do anything and contort anyway that you want me too.

But wait, there's MORE!

If you are one of the first 300 contributors, I will give you the opportunity to actually vote FOR ME. I mean, literally, if you decide that I'm going to be a congressman, I will let you push the little red button on the floor of the House for me. You want to have my vote on Global Warming? Bam! You literally have my vote on global warming.

Hurry though, as there are only so many positions for sale. Contribute now before someone else buys up your democracy!

-O
The Angry Drunk Bureaucrat

A Bureaucrat's Aside Re: Massachusetts

If there's a silver lining out there for what happened tonight in MA, it is this:

In 1994, after the "Republican Revolution," President Bill Clinton, saddled with a floundering attempt to reform health care, finally got his act together and started running a permanent campaign. While what resulted was a policy that pleased neither the right nor the left, the sudden shock after years of Democratic complacency added a new vigor to an otherwise moribund party.

What the Democrats can learn tonight is that the Race is never going to be over, no one can afford to sit on their laurels, good candidates must be identified early and effectively run, the Party must always be on the offensive, and that the base needs to be permanently energized.

Oh, and it's good that they have the chance to learn all this now and not 10 months from now.

Pat Robinson Blames The Devil, Haitians, The French...

Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Lady Gaga, Jay Leno, NBC Executives, Hansen's Disease, Roy Kohn, Church's Chicken, America's Got Talent, the Late Jerry Falwell, Pennsylvanian wines, Avatar, World of Warcraft, haircuts, tax returns, telecommuting, H&R Block, Toyotas, Airbags, needless entertainment awards, Angie Harmon, cufflinks, testes, babies, Ron Howard, peacocks, burritos, Susan B. Anthony, Virginia, Airport Bathrooms, James Spader, youth, hybernation chambers, ice cold diarrhea from drinking too much Jamba Juice, the pubic bone, voicemail, passwords, The Da Vinci Code,, search engines, desktop images, wig extensions, Irish Catholics, vacations, Germans, Israeli Commandos, National Airport Codes, glitter, the Port Authority of New York, sweaters, irony, the Sun, Gays, Liberals, Muslims, Secular Humanists, Vegetarians, Public Broadcasting, Democrats, Bloggers, New Englanders, Pacifists, Zionists, Buildabergers, UFOs, The Teletubbies, MTV, VH1, Family Guy, Rap Music, Heavy Metal, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Liberation Theology, Fred Phelps, Mister Rogers, Howdy Doody, Alberto Gonzales, Florida, Ohio, John Glenn, Hollywood Elite, George Clooney, South Park, North Park, Linkin Park, Log Cabin Republicans, Bravo, BBC 2-4, NPR, Clear Channel, the English Channel, English Muffins, Little Miss Muffit, Little Miss Sunshine, Stephen Colbert, New York's 30th Congressional District, Nuclear Disarmament, the European Union, the Warsaw Pact, Europe (the Band), Toto (the Dog), "Must See TV", Helen Hunt, Euclidian Geometry, Polar Notation, Polar Bears, Panda Thumbs, Steven Jay Gould, The Simpsons, Wallis the Duchess of Windsor, Edward VII, Tim Burton, Nippled Bat Suits, Barry Bonds, Savings Bonds, ARM Mortgages, the 2nd Amendment, the 1st Amendment, Funkadelic (but not Parliament), Roger Clinton, Billy Beer, Rabbits, Miter Saws, Playground Equipment, the London Underground, the Clash, New Coke, Telephone Directories, the Trilateral Commission, Equalateral Triangles, Larry Flint, Flintheart Glomgold, Arnold Judas Rimmer, Ronald Reagan Jr., rendered Hog Fat, Ding-dongs, Ho-Hos, Twinkies, recycled blog posts, the SEC, Satan (again), and the French (very much again) for the Haitian Earthquake.

A Bureaucrat's Aside Re: False Fire Alarms

Would whoever keeps burning toast in the Finance Department, has the malfunctioning space heater in CIS, or is smoking on the 5th Floor, please stop it.

You're lucky it was warm out today.

Police, City Agree on Anal Retentive Contract

The ADB Department of Misread Headlines is reporting today that the City of Pittsburgh and the Fraternal Order of Police have reached an anal retentive contract.

Details of the pact are not immediately available, but speculation is that the new contract would involve new methods of paperwork, hourly hand washing, alphabetically organizing crime scenes, and new, super pressed uniforms. One could surmise that the popular fascination with such shows as C.S.I., C.S.I.: Miami, C.S.I.: NY, N.C.I.S., and Monk has forced the police to pay more attention to details, lest their work be called into question in court.

Annual raises, it is reported, will be calculated out to five significant digits and any extra money left over from rounding will be left to accrue interest at 1.298%.

It is now up to both the Intergovermental Cooperation Authority and the Act 47 Overseers, both masters of minutiae, to approve the anal retentive plan, dot all the T's and cross all the I's.

More details tomorrow in ADB+.

Last Call City Employees

Between my daily beerpong match and my four martini lunch, I saw this:

Firefighter drug testing will be in place by month's end, and the city of Pittsburgh is exploring the possibility of a new alcohol policy, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said today.

The mayor's comments came days after the Saturday night arrest of firefighter Timothy P. Coyne, who is accused of drunkenness and assault in a South Side Flats incident. He is suspended pending a trial board process and his preliminary hearing is set for tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. at Municipal Court.

Mr. Ravenstahl said the city and union are already deep in negotiations over a drug testing policy and now must look for "other solutions to, perhaps, the alcohol issue..."

OK, makes sense: you don't want firefighters going into burning building while flammable. But, wait, there's more:

Controller Michael Lamb said drug and alcohol policies should "be extended beyond just the Fire Bureau to other areas of city government.

"You've got guys driving garbage trucks and dump trucks and water vehicles," he noted, so there should be "some underlying level of trust that these people are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs."

Again, makes sense: you don't want your trash collectors trashed and you don't want your water tank drivers tanked. I get that.

However, if you're going to do this, you might as well go all the way. For example, you might want to eliminate the 2 drink minimum for introducing legislation at City Council. Or, you should probably curtail the "pay your tax/do a shot" scheme in the Finance department. Or, one should stop the Water & Sewer Authority from "testing" the sewer systems with "processed light beer". You can't really do this half-assed, right? You don't want people who are making decisions to be drunk, right?*

Of course, if the City had such policies in place several years ago, a certain member of City government probably wouldn't have gotten into a fracas with the police at a Toby Keith concert.

I'm not worried though: there's enough mind altering chemicals in the floors, walls, and air ducts at 414 Grant Street to keep a good buzz going for any junkie.

Now, I'll you'll excuse me, I have to go polish off a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

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* Well, maybe having everyone drunk all the time isn't such a bad idea. Cheers!

Pointless Milestones...

So, when do I get my gold watch already?

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This post brought to you by a stubborn, nay, pigheaded unwillingness to let this damned blog die after 5 years, despite its detrimental effects to my health, relationships, and personal hygiene. Thanks for putting up with me for so long.