July 15, 2006

Get Out and Blow The Stink Offa Yinz!

It's too darned hot to work around the house, so here's a special expanded Tube City Almanac "to do this weekend" list:

• The Garden Club of McKeesport hosts the "McKeesport In Bloom" flower show, 1:30 to 7 p.m. today, at its arboretum on Pinoak Drive in Renziehausen Park. The famed rose gardens will be open for display, along with special floral designs and pathways.
  
  
• McKeesport Girls' Softball League hosts the A.S.A of Southwestern Pennsylvania Class "B" state championships today and Sunday at the fields in Renziehausen Park. Female athletes from ages 8 to 19 will be competing. More information at the MGSL website.
  
  
• Liberty Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth and Valley streets in Liberty Borough, holds a flea market, book sale, and bake sale from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. today ... lunch will also be served.
  
  
• Pittsburgh Area Jitterbug Club hosts a dance at 8 p.m. tonight at the Palisades, Fifth Avenue at Water Street downtown. DJ Bill Miller will be spinning the tunes. Call (412) 366-2138 or visit the website.
  
  
• Finally, at Homestead Community Days, the borough salutes the Daddio of the Raddio, this afternoon and evening at Frick Park. At 2 p.m., local dignitaries will unveil a plaque in honor of Porky Chedwick; a similar plaque is to be installed at the original WAMO radio studios on East Eighth Avenue at the High-Level Bridge. Other events include live music, art and craft exhibits, and refreshments. The Homestead Volunteer Fire Department will also stage a "battle of the water barrels.

I get tired of hearing people complain that there's "nothing to do" in the Mon Valley. Here's a list of five events that, with the exception of the dance, cost little or anything to attend (and even the dance isn't expensive) ... and have something for practically everyone's taste (or in the case of the flea market, lack of taste).

Nothing to do? Gedouttahere, ya jagoffs!

Posted at 12:41 am by jt3y
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July 13, 2006

Well, Duh

Stop the presses! The American Iron and Steel Institute reports:

An economic study released today concludes that the Chinese steel industry has benefited from massive subsidies, and that the industry’s recent explosive expansion, nearly tripling production between 2000 and 2005 from 126 to 349 million metric tons, is the direct result of government policies.

As a consequence, the Chinese steel industry, which produced more steel than the next four largest producing countries combined, has grown far beyond the size it would have reached under market conditions. This government-funded and driven expansion is already having an enormous impact on the world steel market. (PDF file)

I await upcoming reports titled: "Sun Still Rising in East, Setting in West," and "Study: Water 'Makes Things Wet.'"

I'm not mocking the AISI, mind you --- I think they've performed a valuable service by quantifying this information --- but why has it taken this long for someone to do this study? Where were our elected officials?

Why did we have to wait for thousands of good-paying jobs at LTV, Bethlehem, Wheeling-Pittsburgh and other companies to evaporate before someone sounded the alarm? And I'm not talking about in the 1970s and '80s ... I'm talking about over the past five years.

After years of disastrous labor and industry policies brought U.S. steel companies to the brink of ruin 20 years ago, they made tremendous investments in new products and processes. Unionized steelworkers made enormous concessions to preserve their livelihoods. They learned their lessons, and modernized, trimmed deadwood, improved quality, lowered costs.

We repaid the steel industry's effort to reinvent itself by throwing open the doors to unrestricted foreign imports from China.

Take a walk through your neighborhood hardware store and try to find steel products that aren't made in China --- and never mind looking for electronics or clothing at discount stores that isn't made in China.

Look, China is not a free country. It is a socialist dictatorship where the rights of citizens are severely restricted.

Our private industries cannot compete with state-run firms in China who (in some cases) are being motivated by ideology as much as by the desire for profits --- and who are running flat-out with no protections for Chinese workers, no environmental regulations, and no concern for anything but making as much money as possible for those in charge.

And in many, many other ways --- such as its willingness to sell arms to enemies of the United States --- China's leaders have shown they are not our friends.

Indeed, argues The Boston Globe, "the reason to worry about China is that it is capitalist --- in an especially unrestrained, unprincipled way. ... With more than $1 billion in arms exports, China is the sole major arms exporter that has not entered into any multilateral agreements prohibiting arms transfers to regimes likely to use them in severe human rights abuse." (Emphasis added.)

Some people argue that the "marketplace" has decided that Americans would rather have cheaper goods imported from China rather than paying for goods made in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan or some other industrialized, Western democracy.

I would submit to you that there is no evidence that those importing goods from China instead of making them in a free country have lowered the prices.

(Maybe that study's coming next, from the American Wal-Mart and Target Institute.)

And I have yet to hear an "average" person --- not a bureaucrat, a think-tank analyst or a so-called "expert" --- who thinks the flood of Chinese imports to this country is a good thing for our long-term economic health.

Polls consistently indicate that despite supposedly healthy economic indicators, Americans are "concerned" about the economy. I have no evidence, but I suspect many of those who are "concerned" are worried about two things: Gas prices and cheap imports.

We can't do much about the first thing, other than aggressively funding or otherwise encouraging the development and commercialization of alternative fuels and mass transit. But we can do something about the latter.

Instead of prosecuting (some would say persecuting) illegal immigrants from Mexico, I'd like to see those immigrants made legal U.S. taxpaying citizens, contributing to the U.S. economy.

And I'd like to see the avalanche of cheaply-made, government-subsidized Chinese goods flooding ashore in this country --- and slaughtering our manufacturing sector --- stopped.

Protectionism doesn't help anyone: American companies and workers must produce quality goods and services at competitive prices. But allowing other countries to play by their own rules, while failing to protect our own interests, isn't "free trade" --- it's suicide.

It has already destroyed the clothing and electronics industries in the United States.

Right now, the steel industry is being clobbered.

And when cheap, Chinese cars start being imported to this country, perhaps we can kiss the U.S. auto industry goodbye, too. (And yes, many of that industry's problems are self-inflicted --- much like steel's problems were in the 1970s.)

In the 1970s, by the way, steelworkers were urged to retrain themselves for white-collar jobs --- now those are being outsourced to overseas firms as well.

At the rate we're going now, I suspect that in 20 years, the only jobs any of us will have will be selling Chinese-made crap to one another.

. . .

Crossing Update: The River Road railroad crossing in Port Vue is still a problem for motorists, but the Almanac's complaints are being heard in Harrisburg.

The state Public Utility Commission informs me that they have asked CSX Railroad why the crossing has been left unrepaired for more than a month, and they are scheduling a meeting with the railroad at the crossing.

Stay tuned. Maybe we'll see some action soon!

Posted at 5:14 pm by jt3y
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July 10, 2006

O'Cause For Concern

As much as the Almanac practices a form of Mon Valley chauvinism little seen since Tom Mansfield retired from the Daily News, it's obvious that each and every one of us has a vested interest in the health of the city of Pittsburgh (that community of some size north of Our Fair City).

Thus it is particularly distressing that Pittsburgh Mayor Bob O'Connor has a rare form of lymphoma and has developed two tumors --- in short, he has brain cancer.

There may be two scarier words in the English language ("President Santorum"?), but "brain cancer" is near the top of my personal list.

I've only met O'Connor, briefly, on two occasions that I remember, but I don't mind saying that I got a catch in my throat when I read the news last night (on Dave Copeland's blog, of all places). Besides the obvious sympathy I feel for O'Connor as a fellow human being --- not to mention the fact that he strikes me as a genuinely nice guy --- I feel as if having him out of commission for any length of time would be bad for the city.

Doing a web search on any medical condition is a good way to turn yourself into a hypochondriac, and turns up a wealth of misinformation, and contradictory and confusing information. One article, from the American Journal of Oncology, says conditions like O'Connor's are "curable" and that treatment results are "excellent"; another, from that noted medical journal WebMD, says that patients survive only about a year and a half.

Somewhere in between is the truth; one problem is that only about 1,000 cases of "primary central nervous system lymphoma" are diagnoses in the U.S. each year, so there simply haven't been many comprehensive studies.

The TV news yackers sounded upbeat and positive tonight, but they're so desperately trying to hype the baseball All-Star Game that they would have put a positive spin on an explosion in an orphanage.

And I couldn't help but think of the late Dick Caliguiri, another dynamic mayor of Pittsburgh who was diagnosed with a serious disease while in office. (Being a bit of a pessimist, my first thought, in fact, was "oh, no, not again." I certainly hope not.)

I'm not comparing O'Connor's performance to that of Caliguiri's, of course --- it's a bit early in his term to do that --- but I have been impressed with O'Connor's performance so far. His sunny outlook and positive energy are just what Pittsburgh needed after a long period of tension between the mayor's office, city council and the county; and even if some of what O'Connor says are platitudes, they're at least the right platitudes.

If it sounds like I'm babbling, I am. I'm saddened, and a little worried, and I don't know quite what to say.

I just know that I feel bad for O'Connor, and I'm pulling for him, and if you're a praying person, it sure wouldn't hurt. Besides the fact that I hate to see a fellow human being struck down, I'd like to see what his vision and energy can do for McKeesport's downstream suburb.

. . .

A brief aside: Not only did I learn about Bob O'Connor's illness from Cope's blog, but Cope learned about it from Mark Rauterkus' blog. I don't know what this says about the future of conventional news media, but it wouldn't seem to be good.

Also, I don't know if I ever mentioned it here, but Cope is training to run in a marathon to raise money for the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society. As a guy who only runs his mouth, and who gets winded opening a beer, I'm impressed. Find out more here.

. . .

Finally, as the self-appointed online pundit for all news stories regarding the Mon-Yough area, I feel compelled to comment on the recent death of a suspect in the custody of McKeesport police.

I have no personal knowledge of this case. And yes, I have heard plenty of stories about local police in the Mon Valley behaving improperly --- people even email me lengthy treatises --- but no one ever offers hard facts. (It's always, "a friend of a friend told me, and it seems like a strange coincidence," etc.)

Nevertheless, I feel qualified to state that no one ever died as the result of a police chase if they didn't get chased by the police in the first place.

I have sympathy for the family of the person who died. He was wanted for questioning in connection with a domestic dispute --- he was not convicted of anything.

If the police acted properly --- and it should be noted that preliminary reports from the medical examiner's office indicate that no signs of injury were found on the victim's body --- then this was a tragedy.

I realize that I write as a white, working-class male who's been stopped by the police maybe a half-dozen times in my entire life. But no situation involving police won't become worse if you fight or run.

Keep your mouth shut, act polite, and cooperate --- and if the police are wrong, you're going to have one hell of a good lawsuit, and you'll be alive. The ACLU (of which I'm a member) gives exactly the same advice.

Also, according to a story in last week's Daily News, city police are getting anonymous phoned-in death threats over this case.

In an age of caller ID, there may be stupider things to do than crank call the police station -- but I've been thinking all day, and I haven't come up with any. Seriously: Borrow a clue.

Posted at 11:32 am by jt3y
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